How about Breaking the Silos between Marketing and Sales?
Posted by Naylla Kassam on Wed, Oct 12, 2011
In a new blog series, our Inbound Marketing Director explains how to leverage the collective knowledge held between sales and marketing departments to your organization’s advantage.
Silos – the dictionary definition is storing bulk materials (to keep it simple). It’s not hard to see how this word became a common excuse for lack of results within organizations (usually during a sales vs. marketing war where the fingers are pointed towards each other). For those of you who don’t see it, it’s sales and marketing living in different containers, storing a wealth of information that could significantly impact the business if utilized correctly!
The Marketing Silo:
Marketing departments work hard. They usually create a marketing plan for the quarter, and some even for a whole year! They have their campaigns scheduled out: tradeshows, emails, direct mail drops, telemarketing campaigns, promotions, and even material that channel partners can utilize for their own marketing use. In most traditional marketing divisions, this is likely to be set in stone and very difficult to change on the fly (I say “set in stone” literally).
The Sales Silo
Sales people (the good ones) will do anything and everything to get a prospect into a buying cycle. After a while though, that determination starts to erode. The eye is taken off the bullseye and the pipeline is filled with reasons why there aren’t any sales. The most common one seems to be that the leads are crap! When the VP of sales doesn’t buy that excuse, the trenches are dug and the fingers start to point at marketing – the most common excuse being that the leads just aren’t being generated and the ones that are, are not qualified – just simply tire kickers.
The Sales & Marketing Bloodbath
This isn’t a newsflash, and it sure as hell isn’t rocket science. Take the gloves off, break down the silos, lock your sales and marketing teams into a room and watch the bloodbath. The first time around this might be an agonizing process with a lot of resentment. However, watching the relationship evolve and transpire over the weeks to come is like watching a child learning how to walk.
If your organization doesn’t have flexibility, fluidity, and the transparency within the organization, then this will never succeed. But just as a baby has to take it’s first steps, so does the company – towards success. There is a wealth of knowledge between sales and marketing. The lack of collaboration is the reason for the distress between the two divisions, which is only working as the kryptonite within the organization.
Stay tuned to see some action plans on how this newfound relationship can be a successful one! You can even subscribe to this blog to get the updates straight into your inbox. Just drop your email address into the box at the top of the page.
Click here to download your FREE guide 'Lead Generation to Sale - Bridge the Gap' to help you further.
