Marketing Vs. Sales: The Battle Rages, But Who's Actually Winning?

Office World News, May/Jun 2004 by Stimmel, Craig

For years there has been a battle raging between sales executives and marketing executives over which department is most responsible for a company's success in the marketplace. The arguments, although impressive, are often biased because each advocates their own view of what builds sales revenue. While this "battle" may appear on the surface to be trivial as long as the company succeeds, when each department works autonomously, the only loser is the company.

In most organizational structures, the marketing department is responsible for the following:

* Market research and competitive analysis-offensive and defensive (to prevent surprises).

* Strategic and tactical planning for market penetration and growth.

* Target marketing - identifying prospective accounts that offer the largest business opportunities.

* Product identification/ design/ development and product line expansion.

* Packaging to meet market expectations.

* Pricing to meet/beat market price expectations.

* Communications.

* Advertising/PR and all related subjects.

Selling, in a majority of cases, takes the results of marketing's activities and converts them into profitable revenue by:

* Taking the products/services that have been identified, packaged, priced and sourced (mfg or acquired) and selling them in a marketplace (to resellers or directly to the consumer-business or individual).

* Targeting, penetrating and successfully selling the products/services that come from the marketing effort.

* Being responsible for revenue growth and profitability based on the strategies most often developed by marketing.

In many traditional industries-including business products, imaging, and office furniture-there is confusion between the sales and marketing functions. Where the focus of the company is sales, more often than not, marketing's focus is on marketing support ( really sales support) and is rarely involved in positioning the company Io recognize opportunity, enabling it to convert lhe opportunity into profitable revenue and grow the company.

Companies that do not utilize the marketing departments to their fullest extent can expect business weakening from this type of imbalance.

Companies often fail to recognize what marketing can/should do. Instead of marketing on an on-going basis, looking at competition, the marketplace, product enhancements, and challenges to a company, the marketing department is put in a support role, forcing the sales department to be responsible for communications (advertising, PR, sales statistics, reporting) . These duties take away from future sales goals and focus only on today rather than tomorrow.

Companies that do not utilize the marketing departments to their fullest extent can expect business weakening from this type of imbalance including:

Surprise Challenges

Competitors with strong marketing departments will gather intelligence to find and exploit your company's weaknesses.

Unbalanced Inventory

While pro ducts come and products go, staying ahead of the "curve" happens most often when there a re people (marketing people) who are focused on m a kin g su re the product/service offerings a re up-to-date and appropriate for the local marketplace.

Retention Trouble

A competition's marketing department can use its integrated marketing process (packaging, products, services, logistics, technology, pricing and understanding about the marketplace and competition) to build close relationships with customers that are hard to break.

Decreased Valuation

Savvy marketing departments work with corporate executives to position the company to reduce its vulnerability to pricing strategies by adding "valueadded elements" and "services"to offset the perceived benefit of a "pure price" selling strategy.

Distorted Focus

And there's the result of loss of market share when a company lets itself become "responsive" to the competition instead of forcing them to "respond" to themselves.

Working Toward A Common Goal

It's not too late for dealers and distributors who find themselves in this type of position. There are ways to turn business around and have sales and marketing departments working together for the good of the business.

This may be the time to bring in a consultant who specializes in setting up and creating internal marketing processes for companies. From an outsiders view, consultants are often able to identify problem areas and suggest solutions.

Some of my clients put themselves and their sales and marketing management teams into a conference room with the goal to target issues and to create an agenda detailing their plan of attack for maintaining and growing business. Knowing what the marketing department is capable of doing can advance a company to huge future growth.

If being sales focused has not already compromised the company's market position, and the profitability of the company is at the highest quadrant of the industry averages, then capital resources should be available to train existing marketing executives or hiring a new marketing professional. For help with marketing job descriptions or to search for marketing executives, there are a number of on- line recruiting websites with prospects and job descriptions for your perusal.