From Marketing vs. Sales to Marketing + Sales

The passage of time brings the two closer than ever in professional services

With the passage of time and changes in the marketing profession, primarily due to the increasing penetration of inbound and social media marketing, the marketing and sales heap is once again growing in the middle of the sandbox. But there is no longer a need to separate the piles because the line between marketing and sales has blurred, and client service professionals are responsible for doing some of both!

Marketing Versus Sales: The Way They Were

Prior to inbound marketing and social media marketing, marketing and sales were like an independent couple, bound together with a common purpose but each happier doing their own thing. Here’s what it looked like back then:

Marketing

The role of marketing was primarily to:

• Keep the firm’s brand up-to-date and ensure that the website and all communication materials were brand consistent
• Do frequent outreach to existing clients, prospects and the general public using advertising, direct mail and public relations
• Keep the firm’s contact database up-to-date.

Sales

The role of sales was to:

• Meet with referral sources
• Network at associations
• Speak at conferences
• Cultivate contacts into leads and prospects
• Present to and close hot prospects
• Cross-sell new services to existing clients.

Marketing + Sales: The Way They Are

In today’s world of modern marketing methods, marketing and sales are now codependent, with marketing playing a more dominant role by building awareness, filling the pipeline and engaging prospects almost to the point of purchase. In fact, most B2B buyers are 60% done with their purchase decision before even connecting with a sales or firm client service professional. Here are some highlights of the way things are now:

Marketing

The role of marketing is to:

• Keep the firm’s brand up-to-date and ensure that the website and all communication materials are brand consistent
• Perform regular outreach to existing clients, prospects and specific audiences that are looking to solve challenges using inbound marketing that consists of:
  • Creating fresh, relevant and targeted content (i.e., content marketing)
  • Distributing original and curating third-party content on company social media platforms (i.e., social media marketing)
• Leverage existing, original content to pitch firm professionals as subject-matter experts, obtain article placements and land coveted speaking engagements

• Use traditional marketing methods with the intention of driving traffic back to the firm’s website
• Measure results using marketing metrics and fine tune activities as needed.

Sales

The primary role of sales is to:

• Cultivate and close leads identified through inbound marketing metrics (i.e., lead scoring)
• Distribute firm content on their social media pages such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+
• Speak at conferences
• Close hot prospects
• Cross-sell new services to existing clients

There are two ways to look at the evolution of marketing and sales. The first viewpoint is that marketing has encroached on sales by generating top-of-the-sales funnel leads and engaging them further to the middle-of-the-funnel. The second way to see this is that marketing and sales have become so intertwined that it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins.

Marketing + Sales: The Impact