Integration Between Marketting and Sales

Roy Chitwood Article

Effectively merge marketing and sales departments

In an article I wrote a few months ago, "Marrying sales and marketing to improve the bottom line," I addressed one of the most critical issues facing business today - the necessity of merging the separate silos of sales and marketing to increase profitability.

I encouraged companies to see these entities not as separate groups or costly overhead but as assets that can work together seamlessly with the right approach, commitment and focus.

To illustrate this, I consulted a friend and colleague, John Haskell, who operates the www.DrRevenue.com Web site.

He has been helping companies merge their sales and marketing departments and increase profitability for more than 20 years.

He recently shared with me some insights into the necessity of integrating these two groups and how attitude, interest and buy-in from both sides make all the difference.

As these two departments often operate like silos with limited communication or cooperation between them, I asked Haskell how and why this happens.

"The 'silos' develop when marketing people are brought into the company with no sales experience. In my opinion every marketing person has to have experience 'carrying a bag.' Unless you have actually been face to face with a customer asking for the order, you really cannot be effective creating programs to support the sales force. I tell marketers, 'marketing eliminates excuses by salespeople.' Unless you have been a salesperson you can't do the job."

This illustrates an important point.

Empathy is an important factor in developing a relationship between sales and marketing. As things are structured in many organizations, however, there are additional obstacles to helping these two departments to recognize the value and contributions of the other and ultimately work more closely together.

"Frontline exposure and respect are the biggest challenges," Haskell said. "Marketing people have to sell. There...