What Can Marketing Learn from Sales?

If you are part of an internal marketing department, at any level, you ultimately are working for the sales department. The folks who ‘carry the bag’ as they say are the ones who need business leads, brand awareness, sales collateral, website resources and much more. As a marketer, sales is your client.  What is the best way to learn from your client?  Spend as much time with them as possible.

Typically sales teams will get together on a quarterly basis to get trained on the latest products, share stories, collaborate on strategies and discuss what is working and what is not working.  During this time it is important for the marketing department to be very involved so that you can leave these sessions with a clear understanding of what this group needs. Fresh off of our quarterly sales meetings here are five things you can do to learn from sales.

1. Train on the product: Theoretically you must need to know how to use the product to either market or sell the product. Ask yourself, if a potential prospect walked through your office door and there was nobody else around could you show them how the product works and describe the main benefits?   Better yet; if you are on the phone with a reporter will you be able to better position your story having used the actual product? Um, yes! During sales meetings go through the same training as the team. You might not understand it all (remember, coming from a technology background here) but you will understand the pain points the team goes through and more importantly the questions they are asked by prospects.
2. Ask what did NOT work: Anyone can tell you what worked, but when you ask a larger group of sales folks what did NOT work you will typically get  a lot of quiet.  Followed by a few clearing of throats, until finally a few out spoken folks will finally tell you that the online media buy was pointless, that they don’t use the white papers and the press releases are too long.  Don’t be defensive, make notes and make changes!
3. Ask what does work: After you get beaten up a little on what did not work, time to hear about the good stuff, what did work and better yet what aren’t we trying.  You might just learn that they love the blog, Twitter rocks and what they really, really want is a poster…yep, a poster.
4. Listen to how they say it: We all listen to WHAT people say obviously, but listen to how they say what they say. Sales folks are obviously good at communicating with people, so body language speaks volumes and you can really tell how important a topic is to them by how they are sitting or how animated they become during a topic.  Watching body language has always been my way of prioritizing my to-do list.
5. Realize the differences: Perhaps it is shocking for some but sales people are NOT all the same.  It is important to realize the differences because they speak to their different challenges and needs.  This is particularly true for a global sales force.  Get to know these folks, their culture and what marketing strategies work in China versus Japan versus Germany, etc.  Use this knowledge in your marketing plan to segment by geographies and more.

What do you learn from sales?