21: Why The Relationships Between Marketing and Sales Teams Are Important - with Allison DeFord

a BROADcast for Manufacturers

Meet Allison:

She is the founder of Felt Marketing. She and her team are on a mission to strengthen heart and soul manufacturing for generations by helping manufacturers retrofit their marketing to make sales easier, modifying traditional systems with modern components. She's also your marketing expert on the Manufacturing Masters on Demand platform.

Lori: What's the biggest opportunity manufacturers aren't capitalizing on today to make sales easier?

Allison: Love that question. I would say they're still siloing sales and marketing, and they're not. It's a topic we've all talked about for probably two decades, and I still encounter it, even with my clients trying to get the marketing team to meet up with the sales team monthly. I beg I'm like, okay, give us 20 minutes. 20 minutes. I know everybody's busy. And I think that I know that if you would unite your sales and marketing team, you would increase your growth, and you would increase your profits. I guarantee you'll make sales easier. And that's something that we started talking about at Felt probably six, seven years ago. And we put ourselves through our process, and we realized that we were still speaking our language, not our customer's language. And we thought, all right, what do people want more of? What do manufacturers want more of? They don't want more marketing. They want less marketing. They want more sales. And so that was a big shift for us. And so I've been preaching that ever since. If you can bring your sales team, they're in the boots on the ground. So if you can understand, hear from them the stories, the challenges, the wins, and get ideas. The whole reason we exist is to support them and to support customers. And I learned something about a phrase several years ago. I don't know if it was from Bernadette Jiwa or Seth Goden, I think it was Seth, but it was, stop marketing at people and start marketing on behalf of and for them. So if we can shift that one perspective and unite sales and marketing. We will make sales easier. We will help our salespeople sell while they're sleeping and be of service. And that's the whole point of marketing. So what do you guys think? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Kris: Do you have any simple tricks to create the space for marketing and sales to come together?

Allison: Yeah, well, I had a couple of thoughts. I think this has to start from the top. It comes from leadership. And when I meet a leader that has a sales background, but they don't understand or value marketing, they typically issue my request to bring the two together. And I believe it's just simply based on fear. It's fear of I don't understand what this is. I still think it's smoke and mirrors and fluff marketing. And our sales team is the most crucial part of this company because we make the money and don't have time. We don't have time to be bothered. We don't have time to take out of our day. And so that's the first thing. I think it's got to come from the top down. Second, I think we've got to overcome the fear and simply say, come to the table and say, as a marketer, I always come to the table and say, hey, I want to hear from you, sales team. You have all the knowledge. You are talking day in and day out with the customers and with potential customers. So I need to know what you know. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your ideas. And I think if you're a good marketer, part of our job is to pull it out of them. And I feel like we're good at that. Like I tell people, you don't need special shoes and this isn't going to hurt. It's a conversation. It's dialogue. And trust me, I will artfully pull it out of you. And it's a lot of times those little nuggets that they just take for granted. The thing, too that I find well, I'll give you a super quick example. I was meeting with a client a couple of years ago, and my podcast buddy Ray and I were he was helping me out with this team meeting, and we were desilting and talking about marketing strategy for the next year. And I had several of the salespeople pull me aside. They do this. They're like so they lean in. I'm like, this must be a secret. And they said, this is the first time we've been in the same room together and I don't remember how long. And I said you mean with marketing? And he goes, no, our sales team. He goes, this is fantastic. Plus, you guys are here. So it was like a brick to the head. I thought, wow, okay. Again, that is a leadership opportunity. Not a problem. It's an opportunity. Bring these folks together and encourage it. Encourage that dialogue. I want to see it happening daily. Have the sales team just shoot an email to the marketing director, saying, hey, I just met with such and such client. Here's a pic. We did a selfie. This is something we just help them overcome. There's some brilliant social media content because, again, social media, that's a whole other we could do a series on that, but it's dialogue. It's a two-way conversation. And I think too many people are still using it as an advertising speaker, like blasting, but sorry, that was a segue. But do you guys see the same kinds of things like fear and it's not coming from the top?

And so much more…

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Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and visit http://www.earthlinginteractive.com for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs!

Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!