Quite. And Board executives are well advised to understand the key differences – that marketing is an organisation wide agent of change and sales is a function that needs to be focused and systematic. Boards get it the wrong way round at their peril. Thanks for illustrating the roles so graphically.
I’ve spent the better part of my career in the B2B marketing world, and can say with a great deal of certainty that a major shift is underway creating a very different dynamic between marketing and sales. Now, you might be thinking “oh great, another post about the new world of marketing, everything is social and digital and unicorns, your customers own your brand, etc. etc.” but bear with me.
Not long ago, there was a clear approach to the B2B sales funnel: marketing was primarily responsible for filling the top of the funnel with leads, and the sales organization was responsible for pulling those leads through the middle and lower portions of the funnel and closing business. In theory it seems like a reasonable approach, but in reality it was flawed, and typically created a sizable rift between the marketing and sales organizations: sales was dissatisfied with the leads…
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Humans Buy Services. Honest. 