Sales and Marketing: Friends, Not Foes

Sales and marketing departments, which ought to work together in a symbiotic, supportive way, too often get bogged down in turf wars.

In fact, as much as 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and sales collateral are wasted because the sales team ignores these efforts, according to research from Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based IT research firm. Many sales teams apparently don't trust the materials they receive from marketing departments and opt instead to prepare their own. Such teams typically spend 40 to 60 hours a month recreating customer-relevant collateral material, according to Aberdeen's research, which can be found in the group's report Bridging the Divide: Process, Technology, and the Sales/Marketing Interface.

In working with one IT company, we at Acumen found that the organization’s marketing staff generated an average of 72 leads a month, but few of those leads ever showed up in the sales pipeline analysis. Ultimately, that situation created serious finger-pointing: marketing blamed sales for not following up effectively, and sales claimed that marketing's leads didn't pan out.

Many such problems stem in part from the two departments failing to understand each other's roles. Another issue is internal political posturing. Sales teams often feel that because they're the ones on the firing line, they should receive all the credit for bringing in revenue. Marketers, on the other hand, often feel ignored or unappreciated; they'd like acknowledgement for their role in sales.