Social Selling Mastery

Chapter 13Why Does Misalignment Exist between Sales and Marketing?

It takes a village to raise a child.

—African Proverb

Men are from Mars; women are from Venus. The struggles that we men have in understanding our female counterparts feels exactly the same as the confusion between sales and marketing departments. Men and woman are human; that's what makes them the same, but many times the similarities end there. The parallels to your sales and marketing teams are most likely just the same. Sales and marketing teams directly touch the customer but, for some reason, the average company just can't find common ground after that.

The African proverb that is the epigraph to this chapter, about raising a child requiring a team effort, should be your eureka moment! I'm telling you right now, greater than 50 percent of the success of a social selling ecosystem within your company is going to start and end with marketing! You might be asking yourself “Isn't this book called Social Selling Mastery…as in selling?” Sales professionals are executing a four-step playbook of FEED (find, educate, engage, and develop), while marketing is the entire back end that supports that playbook. Social selling at the individual sales level, with no unified marketing system, is just a random act of social. This book isn't about what one or a few amazing sales professionals can accomplish. This book is about reaching corporate sales goals as one giant, digitally driven ecosystem. But, to become world-class, ...