Kamcity Library - Love Thy Neighbour – The Sales & Marketing Relationship

When was the last time you applauded the new product or promotion from Marketing, or for that matter when did they last applaud the hard work getting their latest variant or promotion listed? A bit of a head-scratcher?

Your response to ‘new’ from your marketing colleagues may well be to cast a jaundiced eye over what is being put before you before summoning up that positive, customer winning smile whilst thinking furiously of constructive things to say. You won’t be alone.

External Vs. Internal Stress

The reality is that there are, and always will be, some fundamental tensions between sales and marketing colleagues, driven by the interfaces they have on a daily basis. There should be no surprise that BAMs identify with their customers (after all, you have been employed to manage and champion their interests) but your colleague(s) will often fail to recognise that they - customers - represent the greatest source of stress you are likely to endure. No one should be surprised that BAM’s seek to minimise the potential for that stress in the first place.

On the other hand, the Marketing/Brand Manager (who is tasked as the Business Manager for his or her brands) has spent hours with internal colleagues and external agencies overcoming obstacles to bring that product or promotion to life. They then have to deal with the company leadership team if performance is less than stellar (it is a fact of life that the strategy is often questioned well before the execution is reviewed). Meanwhile, your operations colleague will be trying to minimise / diffuse the impact of your BOGOF promotion in order to optimise asset utilisation without building up stocks which will cause your Finance Director to jump up and down over its impact on cash flow….

Finance - the Common Language

These stresses are underpinned by the ‘F’ word and financial openness is the place to start when setting out to improve your Sales and Marketing relationships. Do not treat your customer trade terms as a Legion’s Eagle to be protected in your last stand against the barbarian invaders from Marketing. Be transparent, make sure you are aware of your competitor’s trade terms and benchmark them against your own. If your terms are clearly too high, do something about it; and if they are clearly low / too close to the brand leader’s, be prepared to defend them assertively or only concede on an issue critical to your business.

And now to the marketers’ second biggest bugbear – trade support spend – otherwise known as the Sales Directors’ Black Hole, Slush Fund, Golf Day Budget etc. There is no excuse why this should not be equally visible, with effective and ineffective promotions clearly evaluated and mapped for all to understand. Trade support budgets typically reach as much as 20% of invoiced sales value and you need to be ever more considered in your deployment of these funds.

But this is not a one-way programme. Your marketing colleagues should come with products and promotions rooted in consumer insight, rigorously developed and with clear financial pay back benefits to the organisation. If they are not (or are overly optimistic/pessimistic), you should rightly chastise until the appropriate rigour appears.

Communication and Organisation

We all know that the most successful projects are those in which all parties are involved, so why is it we fail to communicate effectively so often? Make sure the first presentation in your annual planning process is from Sales (or Customer Marketing) to Marketing. With only a handful of customers defining corporate success, everyone needs to understand what is driving their strategies. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating sales driven brand plans (as they should be derived, first and foremost, from consumer insight) but I have never understood how an actionable brand plan can be created without putting it through the twin filters of the company’s asset base and customer strategies.

Bring your brand and sales leadership teams together on a quarterly basis (to meet more often creates a talking shop but does not prevent ad hoc meetings where business performance issues dictate) to review portfolio & brand performance/forecast against your annual plan. Agree the strategies and tactics to be used and by when they are to be delivered. The most useful tool is a rolling twelve - eighteen month sales/activity plan as it creates a sense of momentum, continuity and consistency, accelerates the next annual planning process and ensures that the usual rapid turnover of marketers has less impact. All parties should come to the meeting and be prepared to horse trade investment to develop the optimum plan.

Armed with your rolling plan, initiatives should now be briefed at your monthly sales meeting. Make sure that you are clear how you will deal with dissent. My advice is to deal with it ruthlessly. There is nothing more corrosive to strong sales and marketing relationships. If the project concerned creates significant dissatisfaction amongst the sales team, then the sales leadership should openly accept responsibility as it has failed to ensure effective communication of customer parameters with the brand team. Unfortunately, the poor brand manager is often blamed when intervention early in the planning process would have saved much angst.

In keeping tabs on programme delivery, I suggest you use the forum of a weekly commercial meeting within the commercial function leadership and/or with the company leadership team depending on your size and what works best for you. The meeting can be a many headed being but I suggest the following content should keep it focused, manageable and relevant: weekly/monthly revenue/profit review; presentation of key initiatives for buy in/sign off (such as promotions, new product opportunities, research results) and, critically, quarterly presentations on the leading accounts. These presentations allow you to drive your account agenda up the company’s priority list and help overcome unintended or political obstacles by airing your issues at the top table.

And don’t forget your operations/finance colleagues in all this – the more you can even out the phasing of sales and marketing activities, the more effectively your company will be able to use its asset base and the better your profitability will be.

In Summary

Strong teamwork, not only across sales and marketing but with your support functions too, is crucial for business success and is achieved by removing the potential for confusion and suspicion. Do this by being open and transparent with brand/account profitability and associated issues (and deal with them). Make sure that you conduct an effective planning, delivery and review process throughout the financial year that involves as many stakeholders as is practically possible - and be prepared to give as well as take. And finally, this is a two way street; you have every right to expect the same transparency, engagement and support from your marketing and support colleagues.

By Richard Nall - Managing Consultant, Hawden Leigh, January 2006

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