More Finger Pointing Between Sales and Marketing Won’t Solve the Problem

Last week BtoB Magazine published an article summarizing a study from the Chief Marketing Officer Council. The study indicated that “Sales teams suffer from a deficiency of real-time customer insight.” The performance of sales teams is not questioned in the study, per se. In the study, 9% of recipients said their organizations “have customer intelligence systems that deliver real-time, account-based news, social insights, customer developments and market shifts to sales.” More disturbing, perhaps, is that 79% of the marketers who took part in the study said that “they are not satisfied with the current levels of closure and conversion of customer opportunities.”

Although the study was based on the responses of only 230 marketers, one gets the sense that this is another case where ownership of data is being prioritized more amongst departments than the actual utilization of data. Customer insights are relevant to both sales and marketing, yet only 37% of those polled said that this information is made accessible in equal parts to sales and marketing personnel. Are sales managers arguing with CMOs about who owns this type of information?

The real core of this story, however, is not the simple reporting of the study results (although that certainly is disquieting). The real story is in the very first sentence of the article, where it is noted, “Sales teams suffer from a deficiency of real-time customer insight, a shortcoming that hampers sales…” This is not a surprising revelation. A sales team working without customer insights may as well go into the field blindfolded. Without knowing about trends, what customers are interested in addition to the company’s own products, what the sales cycle is like, and more, a sales team cannot possibly achieve the desired results.

The era of “owning” platforms and data must come to an end within companies. While more information is available to companies than has ever been accessible before, silos and a sense of “territory” will negate any benefits that data could provide. There is no reason why marketing and sales should be acting in ways that situate them as diametrically opposed. Ultimately, while the CMO Council charged that sales teams were not closing enough deals, the sales team, if asked, would likely say that the marketing team was not providing enough information about what the brand’s message was, how customers were being targeted or reached, and more. The sales team may even insinuate that marketing is targeting the wrong people entirely. This kind of finger pointing accomplishes nothing positive for the company, of course. “Hampering sales” could be an understatement.

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