It’s time to stop the endless bickering.

Boss: “We’ve had shite month lads, where are the sales?!”

Sales: “There’s no leads coming in Boss, I don’t know what marketing are doing”

Marketing: “We brought hundreds of leads in last month, these lads can’t close the door”

I’ve worked this type of environment before. At best it’s ridiculous, and at worst soul-crushing. The type of place where the bosses would gaffer tape the phone to your hand.

Much like your favourite neon leg warmers, sales floors like this are better left in the eighties.

End of month was always a sketchy time. Especially if the company were, god-forbid, below target…

Which of course, was EVERY month. The targets had to keep going up, didn’t they? How else would the gaffer pay for his second orange Lamborghini?

One time I heard a conversation, not miles away from the one at the start of the blog, which lead to the immediate dismissal of four members of staff.

Honesty, it happens! And they were decent sales guys too! 

I’m all for a little bit of cut-throat – pressure creates diamonds, after all – but sacking decent performers on the spot like this isn’t good for anyone.

My job is a little bit weird, I’m a salesman first, and a marketer second. While I wasn’t around to see it in the 1980’s, it’s plain to see that the sales game has changed.

Nowadays, we need a little more help from our friends in marketing.

In theory, its sales AND marketing, in reality its sales VERSUS marketing. We must to do better. 

Sales and Marketing could work together much more closely. And they should be totally, completely, 100% aligned.

Not, as it seems to be, that one is the colouring in department and the other is there to keep the lights on at all costs.

I say let’s avoid wolf-of-wall-street open plan offices, and build a big, sexy, revenue generating machine. Somewhere everyone knows their role and wants to get involved. Ie. Not fearing for their jobs on a daily basis.

It all starts with a little more understanding.

Sales & Marketing are on the same f*cking team. 

Two sides of the same coin. 

Both sales and marketing, ultimately, do the same thing. They are both about influencing the customer’s buying decisions.

Are you reading that properly?

If they are doing the same thing, why does it feel like sales and marketing are ran totally separately? I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t feel that sales and marketing could collaborate more effectively.

Differences between Sales & Marketing more nuanced, and take a deeper understanding. But let’s make no mistake. This is about earning more transactions, and making more cash. 

Can we all at least agree on that? Yeah? Ok, good. 

The Buying Funnel

You might know AIDA, she’s an old friend of mine.

AIDA is the original buying funnel. There are plenty more out there now, maybe you prefer ACCA, DAGMAR or Google’s modern twist, The Messy Middle.

It’s good to trace things back to the source; AIDA is the first funnel on record, so that’s the one I’ll go with for now. 

Elias St. Elmo Lewis brought us the AIDA concept way back in 1898, and William Townsend made it a “funnel” in his 1924 book, Bond Salesmanship.  

100 years later, and now the entire sales and marketing profession would crumble without the idea of a funnel. Still, some profess that the funnel is dead, and instead think of Sales and Marketing as a “cycle”. 

I don’t care, because it doesn’t matter. 

Let’s keep it simple. 

We are categorically moving customers from zero awareness, to awareness, to interested, to desire, to purchase. And if whatever you’re flogging is good enough, customers will come back for more.

Anyone who “objects” to the concept of a sales funnel needs to give their head a wobble. 

Where does marketing end, and sales begin?

Gooooooood question.

The conventional wisdom says there’s a clear handover. 

Apparently, there’s a point in the buying journey where the ‘marketing’ is over and now it’s up to the sales guys to bring the business in. Typically, we see this in the form of a lead. 

Marketing generates leads, sales closes ‘em. 

If we place a “lead” in our AIDA funnel, they would reside somewhere between interest and desire.

Marketing makes Mr Customer aware of the solution – and because the product-market fit is good – Mr Customer is interested. Now it’s up to sales to pick up where they left off, and turn the interest into action. 

Now I called this blog post the Sales Marketing Overlap, didn’t I? 👇

What’s a lead?

Problem number 1. What’s a lead?

You have to define it. 

This is a tough call to make, and will vary from company to company. Is it literally just a name and a telephone number, ie. someone to call – Or are we going to make marketing qualify the lead?

If you’re asking marketing to qualify – how exactly can we gauge interest? Do we collect the answers to a specific set of questions, or are we going off gut feel?

Buying stuff involves emotional decision making. On paper, a customer might give you the perfect answers but in their heart, they’re just not into it. And when push comes to shove, they can’t afford you anyway… 

That means what looked like a solid lead, in reality was as weak as a straw hut in a cyclone. 

“The leads are weak… The leads are weak…. YOU’RE WEAK” –

Blake Baldwin

Remember that sales environment I used to work in? The harsh one with phones taped to hands and best performers getting sacked on the spot? 

The only time you’d say “the leads are weak” on that sales floor is if you were picking up your coat as you said it – saves you handing in your notice. 

8 minutes of sales-film history right there 👆

Telling your sales manager that you’re not selling because ‘the leads are weak’ is the beginning of the end. Salesmen get paid for the outcome. That outcome being your sales target. 

The boss doesn’t give a shit how you get there. If the leads are weak, you have to be stronger. Either improve your persuasion game, or find some new fucking leads, mate. 

The best salesmen generates his own leads.

Why wait for marketing to hold my hand?

I like to think of sales as “combat marketing”. The nitty-gritty, rough, 1-on-1 sales outreach. I’m talking in-person events, door knocking, cold calling, cold emailing. The more modern salesman could even use social media. 

The model 21st century salesman will be using social media, not just for direct messaging, but for writing content, and generating awareness about him and his company. 

If that’s not top of funnel, lead generating activity, I don’t know what is. 

My point is, there is no part of your classic marketing funnel that a decent salesman can’t or won’t touch. Salesmen make sales, whatever the means.

The good ones don’t wait around for leads to fall into their lap. They hit every part of Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action themselves. Giving us:

The Best Marketers Close

Buckle up Marketers, because I don’t think you are going to like this one. 

You need to be able to close a sale too.

“Always Be Closing”, Baldwin said. Let’s face it, why the fuck else are you there?!

Your graphic design course and your Google Digital Garage certificate hasn’t prepared you properly for the real brutal reality that you actually work in. 

I’d expect a marketer to also be able to take a customer from not zero knowledge about a product or service, all the way through to exchanging said solution for the customer’s hard earned money…

At this very notion, most marketers I see retreat back into their cosy holes filled with colours, typography, shapes and surveys. 

What’s a good conversion rate anyway? 3%? 4%? Most people do not buy from you and that’s just the way it is. 

Get out there, stand in the face of rejection, you might get told no – but who cares! Read a few sales books, it will do you the world of good.

Besides, you’d think that a marketer would only bother talking to red hot leads – people who actually want to buy the product – whereas your sleazy sales guy will try to force a sale out of anyone who dare come within 50 yards. 

Selling is piss easy when people want to buy. 

What happens, marketers, when you do get hold of a red hot customer? Are you going to wait for the presence of a salesman to complete the sale? So they can whoop in with their cheap suit, and pinch a healthy commission?! 

Don’t think so. 

Marketers, don’t be scared of the notion of “closing deals”. We’re all in business to make money, and that’s fine.

That means sometimes its about more than colouring in, and “exploring our why”… We have to actually make some cash. Just know your worth. Understand where the “walk away” point is and you can make some sales too. 

What came first? The Sales or The Marketing?

Pretty obvious, sales. 

Sales came first.

Do you think a businessman from 500 years ago would tell you about what he’s selling? Or about the marketing he’s doing? 

Exactly. 

Fluffy, cosy marketing departments would not exist if there wasn’t a solid sales operation to keep them afloat. 

The product development teams, the customer service teams, the service delivery teams, all nice jobs to do, aren’t they? I wouldn’t mind devoting my time to keeping customers happy, but those departments don’t exist if sales doesn’t do its thing. 

So sales comes first.

Always has, and it always will. 

Yes, a new mould has emerged more recently. Venture capitalists exist, and a company may well establish it’s marketing department early on. There are huge companies that exist now, who build their audience first before deciding to develop any products.

In fact, the shoestring-budget, start-up founder who is assessing the market, understanding customer pain points and developing better products than the competition is indeed “doing marketing”… 

But any company that’s in this for the long term needs to build their marketing around the sales process. 

If you’re in marketing, you have to respect that whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it so the company can make more sales eventually. 

Sales survives, marketing thrives.

And before you thrive, you have to survive. 

The sales process must be at the core of every company. If not, you won’t be trading for very long… 

Sales	Marketing
Short-termist	Long-termist
Sales at all costs	Will consider other benefits
1-to-1 customer relationship	1-to-many customer relationship
Driven by company performance	Driven by customer happiness

If the salesmen spent more time listening to the marketers, their job would be much easier. After all, they need to make customers happy in order to sell to them. 

Similarly, the information from the salesman is absolutely key for the marketers. 

Marketers would be able to start handing over more leads, or making stuff that handles key objections. 

Suddenly, we’re working together!

Salesmen are foot soldiers. In the trenches, talking to customers every day about what they want, why they want it, how they came to consider the purchase in the first place. 

Sales is just 1 on 1 marketing. Not “you must sign this now”, it’s genuine consulting and deciding whether the solution is a good fit. 

Sales and Marketing isn’t all about a purchase funnel. It’s way bigger. 

The sales marketing overlap, isn’t an overlap at all. 

Marketing is a wrapper that makes sales better. 

I haven’t even spoken once about pre and post funnel. 

Marketing will want to have more of a say on things like branding, and why they are even setting up this funnel in the first place. 

They’ll also care more about customer service and making sure that the company delivers on whatever sales have promised. Imagine how much easier life is when you have an army of happy customers telling all their friends about you.

Thinking about pre and post funnel activity in this sort of way means the funnel can become leaner and meaner as time goes on. 

Here’s how I see it. 

Sales chiefly covers the funnel. 

Sales looks at the whole funnel, and the goal is always to make more sales. And the means don’t matter (much).

Marketing goes into more detail. In marketing, how the sale get’s made is incredibly important. 

A marketer’s goal might be to “build awareness”, which is but one part of the sales funnel. Hence, the sales process in more detail.

A marketer can also remove themselves from the funnel entirely, and think about big picture things like trends, cultures and branding. 

Marketing breaks down the sales process.

Unpacking each component part, analysing and making it better. 

The Marketing required depends on the company.

A marketing campaign might target new customers to drive awareness, or maybe target existing subscribers to increase conversions. 

A company needs it’s brand to be received more warmly?

Advertising is required to drive more conversions to a specific segment?

How can a marketer raise awareness? 

A marketer could hire an SEO agency to help with appearing for Google searches when potential customers are in the ‘consideration’ stage.

How about post purchase? Service delivery? Customer service? Complaint handling?

Anything that’s designed to improve customer experience falls into the bucket of marketing.

Customers who have a good experience with you are more likely to tell their friends… and that’s the easiest sale in the world. 

I’ll keep exploring this one…

I genuinely find this subject fascinating.

It seems to be that all the kids who didn’t know what they wanted to do, who “fell into” sales jobs, are now “falling into” marketing jobs?

Yet, the kids who are now falling into marketing, would mostly HATE the idea of being a “salesman”. That’s a shame really, because it’s not that when marketing ends, sales takes over.

Sales and marketing are one in the same thing, yet they operate at different scales, level of detail and time frames.

I haven’t worked it out fully, I will one day, but I do know that the Sales Marketing Overlap isn’t a thing. Marketing is more of a sales wrapper.

What do you think? Hit me up on Linked In or Tweet me: @gkingsleysmith.