Top 5 Lies That Marketing Tells Sales

We loved this post by Geoffrey James so much, and it not surprisingly generated such a lot of response, that we are quoting it here. See the whole thing and follow the debate here.

In our previous lives in large multinational ad agencies, we often got in the middle of the sales-versus-marketing scrum. In one memorable meeting, we kept the Sales VP from throttling the senior Brand Manager.

Here's our choice for the best from this conversation:

The problem is that many marketeers don’t really understand how technology has changed the way that buyer and sellers interact.

From mikertz: Marketing is like foreplay and sales is like sex. they’re crappy without each other and even when they’re both bad, they’re still better than nothing.
GJ's response: How about sales is like having sex and marketing is like talking about lingerie. Because that’s the reality in most cases.

Salesforce.com has managed to grow itself into a major force in the software industry, effectively beating Microsoft at its own game. This is no small feat and is an accomplishment shared by only two companies that come to mind: Intuit and Google.

According to SVP George Hu, Salesforce.com has achieved this almost-unprecedented feat largely because it doesn’t practice much traditional marketing. Instead, it treats marketing as a service organization to sales, and keeps the focus on turning customers into proponents and advocates.

That's right - in a traditional company with a sales team, the role of marketing is to support the sales force.

If you've ever worked in a large corporation, you gotta read James' first post:

• LIE #1: Branding is vital to your success.
• LIE #2: We can train you to sell.
• LIE #3: Our market research is scientific.
  
• LIE #4: We can handle the media.
  
• LIE #5: We are giving you good leads.