Will the standards end the rivalry between sales and marketing, and be used to positively increase the bottom-line? TML finds out that this can be the real loser in such a battle of the professions…

Often seen by account managers as the sales prevention unit, marketing has traditionally been seen as the poor relation to sales, especially within the B2B environment. Marketing has also been seen to lag behind other disciplines in acceptability within many organisations.

The competition for domination

When sales and marketing compete for domination, the majority of effort is directed to internal strife, with a lot of energy focused at short term revenues by sales or frantic lead generation by marketing, both trying to justify their position. This internal strife between sales and marketing can be seen as a battle for domination by two contradictory approaches to delivering customer strategies. Whereas in truth they are the two halves of the same strategic requirement!

However the real loser in this artificial battle is the bottom-line. The lack of operational alignment leads to less than optimum processes and lower levels of conversion or opportunities. This compounds the profitability impact because costs are higher and revenues are lower. Plus a lack of operational efficiency causes a potential cost gap that competitors can exploit.

Competition delivers poor reputations

The outcome for both marketing and sales is a poor reputation at main board level, with neither profession making the impact sadly needed in an age where customer power is rising. The lack of customer insight at main board level can be judged from the poor results in customer-facing key performance indicators. One only has to scratch the surface to see the evidence; good customer service is the exception rather than the rule and number of high profile companies like M&S, Sainsbury’s, Travis Perkins, Smith & Nephew, Hanson and Dixons reported as losing their customer focus in recent years.

As Ian McDonald Wood of Future Value comments “Customer-centric thinking seems to be frequently absent when we review the essential annual reporting narrative about how UK's bigger public companies build value for their shareholders. Worryingly, this can even apply to some B2C companies as well as to B2B ones. They just don't seem to think a customer focus is critical to future success."

Sir Digby Jones, former Director General of the CBI, recently pointed out at the launch of the new National Standards in Marketing and Sales, less than 20% of the FTSE 100 companies have a Marketing Director on the main board!

This attitude towards marketing not only permeates corporate companies, but also into Small, Medium and Large (S.M.E) organisations. Where marketers are often seen as an adjunct to Sales Directors, involved in mainly brochure development, sales collateral and event management. The new standards identify in sales and marketing, the key outcomes, the behavior and skills plus the knowledge needed to deliver best practice.

MSSB: Reducing the gap?

The Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (MSSSB) hope to reduce the gap between sales and marketing by launching a new set of standards that gives them both more alignment.

Thereby, maximising opportunities, raising skill levels and exploiting a more integrated approach to the customer, this all should ultimately increase the bottom-line.

Why is marketing not recognised?

Many reasons contribute to this lack of recognition for marketing as a profession and to the mis-understanding between sales and marketing people. Many organisations have grown up from a product/engineering background where the emphasis has been on the product or service features rather than customer or market requirements. Others have been more focused on sales where checking the customer has a pulse appears to be the only segmentation being used.

In his address at the launch event, Sir Paul Judge, Chair of the Marketing Standards Body, emphasised the size of the professions with the estimate of 545,000 marketing professionals and 766,000 sales professionals in the UK, a total of more than five times the number of accountants. He said, "The profession makes a huge contribution to the national economy but needs to continue to raise its professionalism, especially in the light of the rapid changes in areas such as corporate responsibility, technology and regulatory impact”.

A template for evaluation and improvement

The new Standards give organisations a template to evaluate and improve all of their key marketing and sales roles in order to remain competitive. The fact the standards are for both marketing and sales professional and were launched in concert should help to break down the barriers between marketing and sales, plus promote better understanding of each other’s role.

At a grass roots level Simon Lader, Recruitment Director of Salisi Human Capital Ltd sees the MSSSB course content “as consistent with what most professional training providers would include in their modules. The primary differentiator between the good and the bad training courses is in the quality of the training itself, and how much of it the students retain”. The standard now gives both trainers and organisation managers a blueprint for raising standards.

Will these standards deliver better marketers and salespeople?

The anecdotal suggests that sales people are born rather than made and are not marketers more reliant on their instincts rather than their forecasts?

At an operational level, sales people want well qualified leads from marketing and marketing want better conversion of leads. Bridging this gap is what a lot of time, effort and budget are focused on. At a more strategic level Sales Managers want to increase volume and revenue where as Marketing want to increase market share and profit. Volumes of sales and customers motivate the Sales Director, whereas the Marketing Director wants market share and new markets. These are all the key performance indicators within the business plan, but suitably different in execution and delivery. It is to be hoped that the new standards bridge the gap between these two edifices of success.

The answer will not come overnight, however the development of a structure that all can benchmark themselves against will surely highlight the gap in their organisation and start to work towards narrowing it must be a good thing! After all it will be profitable to fill in the gap, for both of the professions, for the company, and most of all, for the bottom-line.

By Peter Motley,
Director, Marketing Crew

Email: petermotley@marketingcrew.co.uk
Mobile: +44 (0) 7860 346066
Tel: +44 (0) 1663 765234
Web: http://www.marketingcrew.co.uk