Marketers task companies to look inward, end sales and marketing blame game
By Zion Rufus
The long standing ‘blame game’ existing between a company and its sales and marketing division for the problems of its products, has been described as ‘counterproductive’ by concerned marketing analysts as they address the consistent trend of companies replacing their salespeople instead of tackling the underlying and related issues.
As pointed out, sometimes, when a product is having problems, its failure or continuous success is not entirely dependent on the capacity and capabilities of the sales and marketing team, especially when there are structural issues that need to be acknowledged, and problems to be identified.
“Lots of companies think they have a Sales & Marketing problem, but they actually have a business strategy problem,” said Chris Walker, CEO Redesign Labs in a LinkedIn post.
“Stop blaming your GTM team when you have a business strategy problem. Your Marketing & Sales team can’t solve these issues for you. The only answer is to go back to the drawing board and build a solid business strategy for the next phase of growth. Marketing & Sales can’t save a sh*tty company,” he added.
Pointing out that some of these companies have deeply rooted business strategy problems that Sales & Marketing can’t solve, Walker noted that less than 50% of reps hit quota; “but instead of looking inward and admitting they have a business strategy problem, they just fire their VP Sales and bring a new Sales leader in who’s set up to fail. They blame their marketing team for not driving enough pipeline, and fire their team or agency, when in reality it’s because nobody actually wants their product,” he explained.
Primarily, a company’s marketing division is tasked with the responsibility of generating awareness of a company’s products and services, including research and development, pricing, distribution, customer service, and communications; meanwhile, its sales arm uses data and research to help drive sales strategy to reach their sales goals.
Buttressing the need for marketers to evaluate the product and overall position of the business before taking a role at a company, Nate Turner, CEO at Tenspeed.io shared: “If there are problems before you join, marketing won’t fix them and you will inherit
those problems.”
On her part, Martina Lundgren, a marketing communications director believes that it is about doing some ‘serious’ workshopping – recreating the strategy with all the players in the wider management group, and spending some serious time on how to actually execute on it afterwards.
According to Lundgren, it’s not easy, “and in times of recession or economic down-turn, it is so easy to turn to marketing or sales to find scapegoats, instead of moving closer together, taking the responsibility of fixing it and moving forward. But it’s also exciting, and there are plenty of opportunities as well.”
Chris Suglia, a social marketing expert, explained that companies are getting too ‘crazy’ with pilot programs and test budgets for new products without spending enough time on competitive research or product development.
He said: “Even the best marketing in the world can’t save a bad product that isn’t priced correctly. Some of these SaaS giants think it’s just about spending advertising dollars and are doing product research only with close friends and colleagues.”
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