Revenue Disruption: Game-Changing Sales and Marketing Strategies to Accelerate Growth

Driving Growth by Changing the Marketing and Sales Dynamic

Corporate executives who want to fuel growth are increasingly asking themselves: “How do we move forward intelligently? Where do we go from here?” They sense that big changes and real opportunities are afoot for companies who have the courage to seize the moment, overcome the challenges of the status quo, and capitalize on change.

As discussed in the first part of this book, the revenue-creating parts of the modern corporation—the marketing and sales departments—embody fundamentally different crafts and have strikingly distinct cultures. Marketing tends to be more creative, thinking longer-term, managing brand identity and programs that span weeks, months, or even years. And frankly, marketing can also be a bit soft in terms of how it approaches the world. Marketing executives tend to focus too much on the qualitative dimension, often getting so caught up in words, pictures, and messages that they fail to focus on hard performance metrics and bottom-line ROI.

Sales, on the other hand, is the ultimate “what have you done for me lately” organization. Salespeople are trained to think and perform to optimize for the extreme short term: “How do we get the deal across the finish line . . . now?” A salesperson or team might work a deal for a long period of time, but it is still all about “going for the kill” and getting the deal done as soon as possible.

The contrasting psychologies, personalities, and cultures of marketing and ...