Article Excerpts....
Establishing a Strong Relationship with Sales
Too often Marketing and Sales find themselves in conflict with each other. This can happen for any number of reasons: historic performance issues, organizational charter conflicts, differences in how each is measured, inappropriate expectations, or something else. Regardless of the cause, it’s always in the best interests of the two groups to work hard at establishing strong, product relationships.
Marketing must always remember that Sales is its primary customer. And as with any customer, it’s essential to understand Sales’ requirements, processes and pains. Marketing needs to tailor its deliverables to actual Sales requirements, creating value for sales at each stage in the selling process. For example, understanding the characteristics and dynamics, the customer audiences, and the desired outcomes for each step in the sales process all will dictate the timing and composition of marketing programs and materials to best support each.
from Bridging the Sales-Marketing Chasm
On market focus. The business roadside is littered with the remains of companies that have tried to grow beyond their core competencies. Paul’s company chose to concentrate its satellite phone business on the Western Canadian oil and gas industry, targeting major providers with remote exploration operations.
Although tempted several years ago to expand into a segment of the extreme sports market – wilderness snow mobilers, hikers and climbers, and sports fisherman – they chose instead to concentrate on a highly lucrative and expanding market that they knew well. Keeping a very disciplined business focus and executing intelligently and aggressively has served them extraordinarily well to this point.
On knowing your customers. Obviously Paul learned this lesson well. Building deep, productive relationships with customers – on their terms and not your own – is what distinguishes the great companies from the also-rans. Once a year, for example, Sony’s legendary president, Nobuyuki Idei, put on a sales clerk’s outfit for a week and sold consumer electronics in a local U.S. or European department store. He wanted to find out what people were buying and why. Similarly, Jet Blue’s president, David Neeleman, periodically does a stint as a flight attendant just to hear what his customers have to say.
Getting down at ground level with customers – listening, watching, testing ideas and assumptions – is fundamental to the success of any business and can hardly be overstated. John Sall, co-founder of SAS, the largest privately held software company in the world, explains his company’s strategy very simply: “Listen to your customers. Listen to your employees. Do what they tell you.”
from Of Satellite Phones and Oil Rigs: A Customer Service Story
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