The Job of Marketing

Help sales close more bigger deals faster

Early on when I joined Active Software as head of marketing, I made a point of meeting all of the sales leaders. We were doubling, but there was increased stress as targets got larger and deals were becoming more competitive. Marketing was humming along, but they seemed a bit removed from things. There was a lot of activity, but it wasn’t focused.

A few weeks into the job, Tom, one of the regional sales VPs was in town visiting. I asked Tom what he thought of the company’s marketing efforts. He said “It’s cool… for marketing.”

What Tom meant and was too polite to say was that he didn’t see marketing as relevant to sales. Ouch. That’s the worst critique you could ever make. He went on to describe activities that he was organizing in his region, with his team to generate leads. Double ouch.

Whenever I join a new company, I remind people of the role of marketing: Help sales close more, bigger deals, faster. It’s not the only thing marketing does, but it’s arguably the most important.  

If sales is happy, everyone’s happy. Meaning, if the company is hitting its sales targets, things are working. You’ve got product / market fit. It’s the ultimate validation of the business.

Conversely, a company that is not hitting their targets usually means the opposite. Although many CEOs (and occasionally boards) are quick to shoot the sales leader, missing targets is often symptomatic of bigger issues.

Yes, sometimes sales leaders are in over their heads, hire poorly, don’t train their teams, or try to micro-manage every deal with lackluster results. But if you’re on your third “first VP of Sales” and aren’t getting 80% of your sellers to 80% or more of quota, it might not be a sales execution issue. 

You need to get to the root of the problem, and quick. Why are you losing deals? Are you missing key features? Is your product overly complex? Are you priced too high? Or are there simply too few qualified opportunities?

Assuming your product works for some use cases, you should be able to leverage marketing to find more opportunities that fit your sweet spot. Marketing needs to work side-by-side with sales to identify specific use cases where the product meets customer needs and is better than the competition.

While there are many things marketing can do, the top priority has to be in building pipeline for sales. That’s the single most important metric. Don’t argue over Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) or Sales Accepted Leads, just focus on driving high-quality, targeted pipeline. If the pipeline isn’t what it needs to be (2-3x of target) it’s time to ramp up lead generation campaigns (email, webinars, in-person events).  

Sometimes it’s helpful to list at all the activities marketing is doing (podcasts, webinars, branding, messaging, positioning, swag, PR, analyst relations, email marketing, content, web site redesign…) and rank them by pipeline impact. No wishful thinking, no finger pointing, just a straightforward question: has this activity led directly to forecast deals?  

Then, do more of the activities that are driving pipeline and less of everything else. 

In a tough economic climate like we’re presently facing you should consider applying  75% of your marketing efforts toward pipeline. Everything that’s “nice to have” can be put on hold until you’ve got the pipeline you need to drive sales growth. Marketing should flood sales with so many good opportunities that the only antidote is to hire more sales people. 

Know Your Customer

Sadly, many marketing organizations have no idea what sales needs. They focus on building brand or awareness, both of which are noble activities, but hard to measure. 

Here’s one way to bridge the sales/marketing gap: send marketing people out on sales calls. No greater learning happens than when marketing people get to see their strategies and content collide with the real world. I think every marketing person should be in one or two sales calls every quarter. Product marketing and product managers should do even more. 

This is an opportunity for marketing to see their materials and pitches in action and gauge the response from prospects. When do they lean forward, thirsty for information and when do their eyes glaze over, or worse, look at their phone. It’s also an opportunity to gauge what tools sales can use to better tell their story. More case studies? Stronger ROI? More competitive ammunition? It can be eye opening.

If you’re in marketing, make yourself relevant to sales. Ask what you can do to help with deals. Ask what objections they need help with. Fill their pipeline. I guarantee, good things will happen.

Yeah, that’s Steve Austin the six million dollar man at the top of the page.
Better, stronger, faster.