thefunnel

This one is a continuation to a couple my earlier posts in relation to the different functions of marketing. On it’s simplest level some organizations have a hard time figuring out where to draw the line between outbound and inbound marketing, in addition to understanding how tasks should be split up between “creating value”, “providing value” and “communicating value”. Not intentionally, but in large organizations, with a lot of change, if roles and responsibilities aren’t clear it will create a problem. But things gets more complex than this, because marketing also interacts with both sales and business development and there’s the grey zone between marketing – sales, sales – business development, and business development – marketing, as illustrated. I think the obvious areas that warrants some more conversations are: The role of marketing in customer retention activities versus sales as a “farmer” function. The role of sales as “hunters” versus a business development function. The role of a business development function as a “value provider” or “value communicator” versus inbound marketing or marketing communications. The sweet spot is in the middle where you have a good balance between marketing, sales and business development.

It’s interesting how little things really change in marketing. New things comes and goes, but the fundamentals stays. Here’s some guidelines that are still highly relevant today, that I provided my team, a long time ago, when I was managing a European marketing communications team.

• Improve your communication with sales
• Know your stuff even in your sleep
• Manage the lead flow through a future looking lead map
• Be creative, do lots of testing, test new ways to communicate with your audience
• Train yourself, learn new capabilities, benchmark yourself
• Produce detailed,meaningful and relevant metrics
• Achieve your  lead forecast and budget plan, be in control