Don’t Confuse Marketing with Selling

This month’s Fortune magazine has an article about how to manage your business in a recession.  Like many other articles, the writer mentions the importance of investing in marketing.  “Kohl’s, the big retailer, actually spent more on marketing this past holiday season than it did last year,” writes Geoff Colvin. We’ve received several inquiries from CEOs of small and midsized companies that want to talk about implementing a marketing program to increase revenues.  My first question back to them is usually a surprise.  I want to know about their sales team.

• Do you have a strong sales leader?
• Do you have an established sales process?
• Do you track your pipeline?
• How many people sell in your company?
• Do you have a mix of hunters and farmers?

It’s not that we’re trying to be difficult.  We just don’t want to waste your money and our time.  If you don’t have a good sales team, a clear sales process, and a system to process leads through your pipeline, then spending money on marketing is going to be a waste.  No deal was ever lost because a sales person didn’t have the right brochure.  And (to my knowledge), no deal was ever won because the buyer saw a data sheet and yelled, “Holy smokes, lets go buy this product based on how great this data sheet looks!”  (Although this would be really cool if it did happen.)

The role of marketing in a company is to generate leads for the sales team, make sure sales has the tools to do their job, and that people have already heard about your company before the sales person calls.  This makes marketing an integral part of the success of any organization.  However, sales is more important.  Ideally, you’ve got someone experienced in your sales process.  She’s been cold calling, making sales presentations, following up on referrals, generating proposals and closing deals. If you don’t have someone like this, then a better use of your marketing dollars is to go find and train a decent sales person.  Or two. 

Then make sure you have a pipeline tracking system.  It can be a simple excel spreadsheet or a full blown CRM system like ACT! or Salesforce.com. The bottom line is that your marketing team, whether it is inside your company or outsourced to someone like Zephyr, isn’t going to close your deals for you.  They can nurture the lead to a certain point and make sure your website looks great and your sales team has all the necessary tools.  They can communicate to the market and position your company as the subject matter experts you are.  They can wring every dollar of marketing spend and make sure the ROI makes sense.  But they can’t close the deal. Only your sales team can do that, and that’s where the money is.  Make sure your sales infrastructure is sound before you start expanding your marketing efforts.