Improving Customer Advocacy
Today we introduce a new series called The D-Files; Sales and Marketing Disconnected. The inaugural episode focuses on improving customer advocacy. We will get to that episode in a moment but first a little about the series and the hosts.
The purpose of the D-Files is to shed some light on the age-old conflict that seems to have always existed between marketing and sales. The goal is to take a light-hearted look at the fact that these conflicts are, more often than not, a result of poor communication and little empathy between different disciplines. What we find when we take a closer look is that to get marketing and sales on the same page they need to commit to working backward from their shared goals, and to trust one another that the shared goals are also a shared priority.
Seems obvious right? Keep a shared goal front and center and give our peers the benefit of the doubt that they are as interested as we are in achieving those goals.
However, if you are in the marketing or the sales game you know that that the means to get to the ends are not always understood by each party. Creating conflict, resentment, and ultimately failure to get to the shared goal.
Hosts
So you know me if you are reading this on the blog but who is Matt McDarby? Matt is the Founder and President of United Sales Resources (USR). USR is a sales leadership development firm that supports clients in their efforts to win new business. They offer coaching and training with the intent of providing for clients action plans that help to improve sales performance, identify opportunities for growth, and revenue targets.
Matt and I know each other from our undergraduate days at the University of Delaware where we were in the same fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha. We had lost touch for a time but recently reconnected, and when we did it became apparent that Matt and I were addressing similar marketplace needs from two different perspectives. Matt from sales and yours truly from marketing.
Both Matt and I have experienced the challenges that we will cover in the D-files first hand, and feel like we have something of value to give to professionals that are facing them now.
With that, I give you the first episode of the D-Files: Sales and Marketing Disconnected. Today’s episode is about improving customer advocacy.
Both marketing and sales want to improve customer advocacy, but too often neither party is prepared to understand the other’s priorities where customer advocacy is concerned. When this happens improving customer advocacy becomes the priority that has no champion. At the worst in creates contempt and mistrust between marketing and sales.
How does this happen? How do major obstacles get in the way of improving customer advocacy?
