Articles
What is it?
If you join a sales and a marketing department together, you get a ‘smarketing’ department. Seriously, you do.
Why would you want to do that?
To sell more stuff. According to research by consultancy the Aberdeen Group, the traditional ways of selling and marketing have been supplanted by websites, email, blogging, analytics and search engine optimisation. People buy more stuff on the internet now. For companies to take advantage of this, they need a more closely integrated sales and marketing department.
I’m naively thinking sales and marketing do almost the same thing anyway?
You are naive, but also right. The goal is always to sell stuff. The difference is that sales is usually people-led – the salesperson going to see clients, on the phone, building relationships. Marketing is normally about media, advertisements, events and content marketing.
So why does it matter?
Surveys show that sales and marketing often have negative perceptions of each other. Sales sees marketing as irrelevant party planners, while marketing sees sales as lazy and incompetent. When they don’t get on, it’s bad news for the bottom line, especially for B2B companies.
How do you do it?
Set the same shared goals and metrics for both. Facilitate and encourage the sharing of data and information. Make them commit to doing things for each other. Failing that, start calling them ‘smarketeers’ and see how far that gets you.
What’s next? ‘Smarkineering’?
Don’t be silly. It would obviously be called ‘menufacturing’.