Sales vs. Marketing

Think You Have a Team?

Think again.

Are your team members competitive or in-sync during meetings?

Are the two departments aware of what the other is doing? Do they provide constant feedback to each other or do they report their efforts exclusively to you?

Do you have a formal or informal liaison who serves as the link between the two?

How many different layers must one person in one department go through in order to obtain information from someone in another department?
What's at StakeYour sales and marketing staffs each have their own unique stakes and goals in your business.

In a perfect company, all departments work in tandem in order to create, produce, market and sell your product or service. The reality is that your "team" consists of individuals who are first and foremost looking after their best interests. (Don't kid yourself, because this also includes you.) The information bottlenecks, egos and politics that are prevalent in every company restrict your growth. So how do you knock them down?

By democratizing information.

I'm not suggesting that everyone in your company should have access to every scrap of information but there is no reason that sales figures and marketing objectives should not be freely distributed to all members of both staffs. We all know that information is power. By reducing the value of "secrets", you diminish the hoarding of valuable information.

Suppose your Sales Manager discovered that a marketing program for a particular territory wasn't proven effective. Instead of informing the marketing manager of his finding - he simply decided to wait until your regularly scheduled group meetings to announce his discovery.

What he also did is cost your company money by putting his own personal interests in front of the interests of the company!

Share the Wealth
Show your employees that sharing information is much more valuable than sitting on it. Instead of waiting for you to digest information and make a decision, empower them to co-act and present you with a list of "opportunities" instead of "issues" at your next meeting.

Clear and unobstructed communication in your workplace is imperative. It is what separates the leaders from the also-rans.

In Seth Godin's wonderful book, Spreading the IdeaVirus, he illustrates the importance of determining who the "sneezers" are in peer groups, thereby increasing the effective exchange of an idea or product information. By pinpointing and correctly utilizing peer leaders and communicators, a company can vastly increase the spread of their product, service or idea with less effort. The same tactics can be applied internally.

Put aside your organizational chart for a moment and determine where the real power centers in your company lie. It's not likely to be you.

These people should NOT be assigned to interdepartmental teams. Their interdepartmental functions have already organically fostered! Find them and use them because they are already communicating. Ask them if they have any ideas.

Go buy a water cooler. Buy some lawn chairs or a picnic table. Put them in places people congregate. Let them talk because you never know when the next million dollar idea is on the tip of someone's tongue.