A real conversation with a marketing manager at a well-known tech company:
MARKETER: I'm so frustrated with them. My salespeople don't read my emails and don't even look at the tools I create for them. How can I get through to them?
JEFF: Give me an example.
MARKETER: Back in June, I put together a bunch of case studies...the sales reps are always asking for case studies. So I created them, sent them out, and nobody's using them. Sometimes I wonder why I waste my time.
JEFF: How'd you send them out?
MARKETER: I attached them to an email and sent them to our sales team email alias.
JEFF: In June?
MARKETER: Yeah, middle of June.
JEFF: What were your salespeople concerned about at the time you sent the email?
MARKETER: I dunno, maybe kids getting out of school? Summer vacations?
JEFF: Try again. Middle of June, what are they stressing about?
MARKETER: Uhhh.
JEFF: Have you ever had a quota to hit?
MARKETER: Uhhhh...No..
JEFF: Try to imagine what it's like to be a salesperson at the end of a quarter...
I could continue but you get the drift. Marketers have always been taught to walk in our customer's shoes, understand their pains, speak their language, so our messages will resonate. But if you want any chance of aligning with sales, you need to walk in a salesperson's shoes, and feel their pains.
Recognizing the "end of quarter crunch" that salespeople go through is just one example of putting yourself in their shoes. Don't try to send out stuff for them to digest and figure out how to use in the last week or two of a quarter. Some other points to recognize:
- Salespeople have to manage a portfolio of accounts the way an investor has to manage a portfolio of stocks. They have to pay attention to existing customer issues, late stage deals, middle stage deals, as well as the leads you think are the hottest thing since sliced bread. Take that into account when you're negotiating your SLAs for lead follow-up.
- Most salespeople don't have as high a base salary as you do, so keep that in mind when you call them "coin-operated".
- Time is the most valuable resource for a sales rep, and they have to manage their time very carefully, so its not a good use of time to have them chase poorly qualified leads. They'll get skeptical of a particular batch of leads if the first 1 or 2 are garbage.
Help me out here, what else should marketing people recognize about the life of a salesperson?
