Comments on: Guest Post: The Cranky Marketer Goes Off – Part Deux

By: Paco

Paco — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:39:07 +0000

Hey, anyone actually contract a company to perform win/loss analysis? (emphasis on ‘loss’)

Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. And if you’re in a pissing match with Sales, they’ll bring a bunch of numbers with dollar signs. If you just bring a lead-gen report, you didn’t bring a knife, you brought a spoon.

As the post already points out, under-utilization of leads can be dismissed off-hand by saying they were low-quality. And if you don’t have data to contradict that, it’s your word versus the folks who bring in the moohla. An objective win/loss report will show why deals were lost, and it will highlight whether it’s more about the individual salespeople vs other factors. Try to make sure you get this allocated in your marketing budget every quarter.

I also think PMs and PMMs try to care about far more people in the sales force than they should. Quota = natural selection.

On that last point, the argument goes like this. If the entire sales force has access to the same collateral, same demos, same references, etc. why do some people exceed quota every quarter while others flounder? You can’t pin that on PM and PMM.

Of course, if even your top sales folks are saying that PM and PMM are doing a crappy job, it’s time to take your lumps.

All that said, I hate to say it, but in all but one company I’ve worked at, the Marketing team didn’t seem worth the cubicle space they occupied. I’ve only had the pleasure of working with one marketing director who was really on top of his marketing plan, value props and messaging, lead gen activities, channels and partner activities. He wasn’t a “product expert”, but he articulated the product positioning and value props so clearly and forcefully, he didn’t need to be a product expert in order to be successful. He would say them with such confidence and conviction, prospects just ate it up – and they wouldn’t be put-off when he would defer detailed questions to an SE or PM.

My 2 cents is that to be a successful PMM and not fall into the space-wasting-fluff-regurgitator category, you need exactly that sort of aggressive self-marketing both internally and externally. Know your message, stick to it, speak it with conviction, and back up your existence with metrics with dollar signs.

By: Cranky Product Mgr

Cranky Product Mgr — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:58:49 +0000

Whoa, brawl breaking out in the comments b/w the Cranky Marketer & @aprildunford . 27 comments and counting. http://bit.ly/6n7Dt

By: The Cranky Sales Engineer

The Cranky Sales Engineer — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:07:31 +0000

@Happy_Sales_Engineer.

Geesh. Now everyone will want to do it. Shhhhhh!

By: Happy_Sales_Engineer

Happy_Sales_Engineer — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:35:42 +0000

I’ve done just about everything, PM, R&D, Support, and now PreSales. Let me tell you, I am in heaven now. Best job ever. The Cranky Sales Engineer may have things to complain about – we’re human right? – but I’m not buying most of it.

By: April

April — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:45:53 +0000

Hi Justin,
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think marketing should report to sales (yipes!), but we certainly do work for the sales force. That doesn’t mean you never disagree or complain about each other, it just means that sales is a customer of marketing (and not so much the other way around).
I also totally agree with you that the lines between product management and product marketing are blurry (or in the case of small companies don’t exist at all).
I worked at a company once where leads weren’t being followed up on fast enough (if they were followed up on at all) and I fixed it. First of all, the reason most of the leads weren’t followed up on is because they weren’t really “leads” they were just prospects. We had an inside sales rep do follow-up and further qualify leads that weren’t considered “A” leads. As for the “A” leads, once I figured out that not all of those were being followed up on, I started doing a weekly report to the CEO that listed which reps weren’t following up on which leads (the reps were copied). That lasted about a month before suddenly, that report wasn’t needed anymore.
My point is, in this case the problem was partly that the “leads” were crap and the reps didn’t follow up on any of them as a result. In my mind it’s marketing’s job to close the loop and figure out how to maximize the value out of the leads that are created, not just throw them over the transom to the sales force and complain when they aren’t doing what we hoped they would do.
April

By: Justin Burrows

Justin Burrows — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:30:49 +0000

@April: “If you can’t get your head around that, you need to pack up your stuff and go on back to product management and leave the real hard work of marketing to the marketers.”

Could I? Please! Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d! O god, I could be bound in the ProdMgmt nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space… I guess the key problem is that there is no real way to divide the two – nor should there be, really.

Marketing works for sales? While I have always appreciated my sales brethren, you’re asking Marketing has to provide a structure through which the sales team can sell, but if they start _reporting_ to sales, you’ll end up with a different set of collateral and, god forbid, product features (see prev. graf) for each and every prospect they try to woo. Having marketing work for sales would be like telling B.A. Baracus he works for Hannibal– a bad idea.

So, I put it to you, April: Don’t you get cranky working with sales sometimes? A-Leads close at a many-times higher rate if they are contacted within 48 hours, is that in marketing’s purview to make sure they tag them in that time?

By: April

April — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:04:19 +0000

Hi Bill_the_PM – the comments were directed at the post, not the commenters. I couldn’t agree with you more that Sales and Marketing need to respect each other.
Hey Cranky Marketer – no need to get defensive, I’m just saying that dismissing sales as incompetent is no way be successful in Marketing (which I’m sure you’re finding out). You aren’t “dismissing my profession” in that post (at least that wasn’t how I read it), I just disagree with how you do marketing. A lot of what you position as someone else’s responsibility I would argue you should own.
I get that it’s supposed to be funny and I do my fair share of complaining about sales but seriously, if 98% of your leads end up in the dustbin, cranky or not, marketing has a problem.
April

By: Cranky Marketer

Cranky Marketer — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:29:28 +0000

April.

Wow, what hostility. Dont’ want to get into a fight with you so all I’ll say is the following:

1. Marketing does NOT “work for” Sales. Marketing works for the company as does Sales. Each has responsibilities they must uphold.

2. I’ll decide where I will and will not work, thank you very much! As you are a career Marketer, maybe I hit a sore spot with you or you think I’m disparaging your lifelong profession. Well, now it’s also *my* profession, and there are problems in technology Marketing that need to be discussed and addressed.

3. This is a CRANKY blog. It’s not a “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya around the campfire” blog. It’s meant to be over-the-top and “in your face”. Just as the CrankyPM is an alter-ego of a real person, so is the Cranky Marketer. Don’t take it all 100% literally.

By: Bill_The_PM

Bill_The_PM — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:28:20 +0000

@April not sure who specifically you are targeting your comments to since there are many comments here. Marketing’s role is not just lead generation. In fact, I did not dispute that we work for sales but marketing also works for the whole company in terms of strategy, seeking new directions, exploring business models, branding, etc.

Many of the comments are discussing the lack of respect for each other’s role in the company. The lack of respect leads to resentment and lack of cooperation and inevitably bad business. Hopefully, the Cranky PM is not the site where people put up or shut up like you do.

By: April

April — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:15:36 +0000

Wow. I’m sorry I missed this one when it first got posted.
I’ve worked in marketing my entire career and if my attitude towards my sales teams was anything like yours, I would have (and should have) been fired.
Marketing works for sales. Get over it. If 98% of your “leads” end up in the dustbin then I would hazard a guess that you either have a serious lead gen problem, your definition of “lead” is wrong, or you don’t have the right level of visibility into your pipeline to know what is happening to that 98%. Either way, there is a serious problem and it’s your job to fix it.
Sales always wants more from marketing and yes, some of it isn’t what they really need but in the end if sales is broken, it’s marketing’s job to figure out what the real underlying problems are and fix them. If you can’t get your head around that, you need to pack up your stuff and go on back to product management and leave the real hard work of marketing to the marketers.
April