To flourish, technology companies need to separate sales and marketing and demonstrate their equality.
It is very common to have a vice president of marketing and sales title in technology companies. My experience suggests that most of those that have earned their way in to this spot came up though the sales department. The logic is spot on, take the best sales person and have them drive the sales effort for the whole company.
But what about marketing? This usually takes a back seat because it falls out of the comfort zone the successful salesperson relied on to earn this position.
Sales and marketing have completely different goals and each discipline addresses a valid business need.
Yet, there are truly significant differences to these two activities. I have heard many comments from each of these departments over the years.
Sales think marketing folks are lightweight and don’t understand the trenches, they often wonder why generating leads falls only on their shoulders and believe marketing is a cost and not a revenue generator. Of course, marketing believes they are the only team thinking strategically, sales gets all of the glory because it’s easy to quantify a new sales revenue and that sales will say anything to close the deal.
Without a properly balanced leader that understands the value of both disciplines, these comments ring true. Technology companies need to separate these functions and demonstrate their equality.
Technology companies need to separate the marketing and sales functions and demonstrate their equality.
- A separated and focused marketing team can build both short and long term strategic plan that will support the sales function and build the over brand of the organization.
- The independence of a Sales team should understand the strategy of the company and work with marketing by providing front line feedback as well as follow up against the marketing efforts in the field.
These two departments can be managed with equal footing and work together to ensure they approach the market in tandem Technology companies that understand both teams add value to the revenue stream and ensure they are structured to take full advantage of each skill set will flourish.
