The Hindu Business Line : `Rise together, fall together culture necessary'

Dr Suj Krishnaswamy is the founder and a principal at Stinsights, a Chicago-based business strategy and market research firm specialising in Sales-Marketing interface. Along with Philip Kotler and Neil Rackham, she is co-author of a seminal article called `Ending the War between Sales and Marketing' in Harvard Business Review July-August 2006, which examines why the Sales and Marketing workforces of many companies always seem to be at odds, and discusses how better cooperation can be facilitated between the two vital arms.

In Chennai recently, she took some time off to talk to BrandLine on the issue. Excerpts:

One gets the impression that the labels Marketing and Sales may themselves be the cause of strife sometimes, with one being more high-profile and the other less so. Can labels make a difference to the division of labour?

The strife really stems a lot of times from how the two functions are structured and how they interact with each other. The people in the two functions also are generally of two different personality types. As companies become more mature, it becomes imperative for Sales and Marketing to work together. Scale and complexity of the business as well as the extent to which they are global are the key factors that determine the relationship between Sales and Marketing.

You mentioned the example of IBM integrating its Sales and Marketing groups to create a new function called Channel Enablement. Do such moves really help?

Oh, structural moves like this do make a difference - they are enablers of the integration. In IBM's case, the executives in the channel enablement function had a leg each in Marketing and Sales. In addition, all the key metrics were set up to track Sales-Marketing integration.

You've said that typically Sales staff prefer to go by what individual consumers want whereas Marketing wants to issue products with a broader appeal. Is there an argument that goes: the Sales staff works in the field, so it's better placed to judge the pulse of the market than Marketing?

The knowledge from both Sales and Marketing is integral to understanding the dynamics of the market and changing customer preferences. For example, in retail, a company cannot accomplish an aggressive growth agenda if market and customer acquisition strategy (that comes from Marketing) is not accompanied by store-level Sales efforts to grow and cultivate the right customer segments.

Communicating the right value proposition to the marketplace is important. This can be done successfully only if the insights that Marketing gets from research are conveyed in a palatable/ready-to-use style to the Sales force. We have to remember that the Sales teams are the ones who convey the product's values to the market place.

Is there a feeling among Sales staff that Marketing "is always telling us what to do"?

In most cases, Sales doesn't find Marketing's inputs readily usable. The complaint is that Marketing is always urging Sales but not providing enough of the right kind of support to generate better leads or close deals faster. Marketing's common complaint is that Sales is not representing the brand the way it should be or paying attention to more strategic positioning issues. What one needs to ensure is that the differences do not lead to compromises on the delivery of the business model — growth and revenue issues.

Having the same goals for both teams will help; so will rewards linked to these goals for both teams. There has to be a `rise together, fall together' culture where both sides know if they do well, they will both get credit, if not, neither will.

What about co-creation of value? In the context of customising/adding value to products consumers use, how does this tie up with the war between Sales and Marketing?

In the follow-up to our work on ending the war between Sales and Marketing, we're proposing Sales, Marketing and product development have to jointly work on a value chain model with three components:

Choosing the value that the organisation seeks to deliver - market segments, customer value segments, value propositions and so on

Providing the value, which includes customer relationship management, consumer touchpoints, delivery and quality control

Communicating the value, which means making sure that the consumers understand how exactly the offering fulfills their needs better than any other offering

Now all this needs to be done in the context of working with the customer's value chain and eco system — only then you are truly a strategic partner in co-creating value with the customer.