Why Other Departments Diss Marketing (and How to Make them Stop)

September 18, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

Is your team the black sheep in the company? Do other departments discount marketing’s contributions? Are your requests to other teams met with sighs and grudging cooperation—if at all?

If so, then your team has a reputation problem.

I’m pretty sure your team didn’t start out that way. Something is causing frowny faces, and you need to find out what it is before it gets out of hand.

Here are some likely causes:

Shiny object syndrome

You know what the product team hears when marketing proposes features based on “market trends” and “competitive research?”

“Let’s chase this new shiny object and hope it works out.”

Does your accounting software really need that fancy Enterprise Strategic Planner module when your customers are mostly small business owners? Probably not! But marketing must have it, because either:

Gartner said that’s what the top-performing ERPs are doing,
The ICFA 2019 Keynote was very convincing
Competitor A just released a similar feature, or
That’s what everyone is searching for these days.

Which one is the wrong answer?

All of them.

The product development and customer success team roll their eyes any time marketing votes at roadmap meetings, because their votes are almost always influenced by one of the above. It’s almost as if marketing is insecure about the company’s identity and needs validation from outside influences.

Don’t get me wrong: external research has its place. But the biggest danger about conclusions drawn from outside the company is that it ignores the people closest to you: your customers.

Don’t be everything to everyone. Narrow your focus. Serve the needs of your current customers. Don’t get caught up in the glitz and glamour of what other people are doing and concentrate on marketing to your target audience.

Don’t know who your target audience is? That’s a completely different problem.

Sales isn’t happy with your MQLs

In an ideal world, sales and marketing should be best buds: two partners, back to back against the rest of the world (or your competitors).

What we get, however, is finger-pointing and back-stabbing. Sales doesn’t pick up the leads that marketing hands over, and the leads are left to rot. From marketing’s perspective, sales isn’t doing their job.

But is it really sales’ problem? There are a number of reasons that sales might be ignoring your leads, and some of them might be on your shoulders. A few possibilities include:

Your MQLs don’t actually qualify
You and sales don’t share the same priorities
Marketing has a poor track record

You won’t actually know what the problem is until you have a heart-to-heart with the sales team. Figure out the root cause (or causes) and put together a plan to address them. Then do a regular team review to see if your lead quality has improved.

Marketing’s value isn’t being felt

Every organization has marketing skeptics, but you know you have a problem when the people who are supposed to be backing you are the ones questioning your worth.

Like, you know, your boss.

You need to do a quick self-check the moment you notice their attitude changing.

Do they have a point? Have your marketing numbers been suffering? Have any of your recent efforts under-performed? Are the MQLs you send sales being picked up?

If the answer to any of the questions above is “yes,” then don’t wait for your boss to meet with you about it—because when he does, that’s already a reprimand. Seize the initiative and meet with him instead. Tell him you’ve noticed the numbers slipping and that you’re working to address it (and tell him how).

If the answer is “no,” then you probably need to do a better job promoting yourself to the company. Don’t let sales hog the limelight! Show off your team’s success! Publicly congratulate your team on a job well done. Make sure others know that your team is making valuable contributions to the company.

Marketing gets to do the “fun” stuff

Trade conferences, press events, photo/video shoots and event marketing are serious work and can be a real drain on energy. But when viewed from the perspective of people stuck in the office all the time, marketing is a non-stop glam party.

And they do have a point. Some industry conferences are so over the top they’re basically paid vacations. *COUGH* DREAMFORCE *AHEM*.

So how can you conquer the misconception that marketing is all play and no work?

Give them a taste of what it’s like.

Next time you hold an event or something similar, ask for volunteers from other departments. Have them assist in everything from event logistics to crowd control. Stuff goodie bags. Greet guests. Set up and tear down. They’ll be able to appreciate the commitment and work that goes into a well-run marketing project.

Or, you might end up reinforcing the idea that marketing does get to do the fun stuff.

(Because honestly, we do.)

So basically…

“Haters gonna hate” is completely the wrong attitude to have in a professional environment. It’s poison and you need to excise it right away.

Find out the cause and do whatever needs to be done to resolve it in a positive and professional manner—whether that cause is personal, professional or both.

Why Isn’t Sales Following Up My MQLs???

August 28, 2019August 28, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

Ever feel like sales is wasting your marketing team’s time?

You pour so much time and effort (and money!) into hosting events, sending emails, erecting landing pages and parading around on social media, only for sales to ignore your hard-won leads!

Doesn’t it just make you want to FLIP THE TABLE?

Don’t.

Sure, sales isn’t following up on your leads. That’s frustrating, but there’s probably a reason behind it. It might not be a good reason, or a reason that’s under your control, but it’s there nevertheless. And if you can discover the why, then you can discover the fix.

Here are some of the most likely reasons sales is ignoring your MQLs:

Sales has their own leads to follow up

Sales is a fast-paced, high-pressure environment, and the average sales person would rather prioritize leads that are further down the funnel than those they need to nurture from scratch. As the saying goes, “a bird in the hand is worth MQLs in the bush.”

But wait, isn’t sales supposed to rely on your leads for their call list?

Usually! But if your sales reps are performing the functions of both Account Manager and Sales Development Representative at the same time, then they’re going to have their own crop of leads to harvest. Your MQLs are just going to be backup leads in case their real (“real”) funnel dries up.

Sales doesn’t know they have new leads

You don’t know what happens when you lob a lead over the cubicle wall. You don’t see which sales rep catches it or what they’re doing with it.

Sometimes, they don’t even know there’s anything there.

When leads are missed, there’s usually a problem with your turnover process. For example, the process could’ve recently been changed, and people are still doing it the old way. Maybe you or one of your team has set up a marketing campaign, and the leads aren’t being assigned properly. It could even be that the CRM is being mismanaged and nobody’s picked up on it yet.

Whatever the case, you need to track down the gap in your workflow and plug it as soon as possible.

They’re too busy to follow up on leads

This might seem like a great problem on the surface (business must be booming, right?), but could actually be a symptom of a huge staffing problem.

If your company doesn’t have enough trained and productive sales people, then even great MQLs are just going to just going to sit there until they lose interest, and you’ll have lost thousands of dollars in opportunities.

It takes the average sales person an average of 3 months to be competent at selling your product, and even longer for them to be consistently good. If your company’s sales team finds itself short-handed, expect leads to languish in the funnel for a good long while–even if they hire a new rep right away.

The MQLs don’t match sales’ priorities

Do you want to know what happens when sales is told to promote Product A but you keep sending them leads for Product B?

That’s right! They ignore your leads in order to sell Product A.

This usually happens when sales and marketing don’t talk to each other. Marketing comes up with a fancy new campaign for something, but sales prioritizes growth in a different direction. The result is wasted effort on marketing’s side, and stunted growth on the sales side (since their prospecting isn’t being supported by marketing’s leads).

Sales is sick of low quality leads

The truth hurts.

Sales is ignoring your leads because your leads aren’t panning out. You’ve lost their trust, and you’re going to have a heck of a time convincing them to take your MQLs seriously.

This might happen because you’re entering a new market, or because the marketing person in charge of strategy is new/doesn’t know what they’re doing.

How do I fix this???

It’s easy for marketing to point at sales and yell, “get your house in order!” But really, this is a problem that you need to work out together. Here are some approaches that may help:

A stronger sales/marketing partnership. You can solve most of the problems I mentioned above just by talking to the sales team. Open lines of communication and have regular alignment meetings. Marketing is meant to serve sales, so make sure you’re both walking in the same direction.

Meet with sales on a regular basis to assess the quality of the leads and further refine your criteria for what makes an ideal MQL.

Process automation. If inbound leads are getting ignored, then set up an automated alert for leads that have been sitting too long. Set up your CRM or marketing automation system to notify the sales manager if a lead has not been contacted in X days (depends on your sales cycle).

Set up/refine your lead scoring. If sales is having trouble keeping up with the flow of leads, then set up a lead scoring system so that they can prioritize the best ones. Work with sales to determine the different criteria and their weight, so that the scores are logical and a good indicator of their potential value.

So basically…

Don’t just raise your fists to the sky and curse your sales team. Figure out what their challenges are and be the first to come up with a solution. Not only will this endear you to the sales team and improve your working relationship, but it will also prove marketing’s value to the rest of the organization.

How to Ride the Post-Conference Reality Check

July 24, 2019July 21, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the scene: you’re back in the office after spending a few days hobnobbing with fellow marketers at an industry conference.

You’re fatigued, stressed and oh-so-very behind on your work, but damn it, you came back with so much!

Revolutionary ideas!

Useful contacts!

Advice from Gary V tailored just for you (sort of–there were lots of people in the room).

You feel like a fresh grad again; so full of potential and optimism that you want to storm into the CEO’s office and go, “this is how things are going to work from here on out.”

Fast forward a month later.

You’re back at your desk. The same one you’ve been at for three years, with the same stale coffee and cutesy knick knacks, only this time there is a lanyard from the conference hanging from a peg. One of the many things you brought back from that week, but the only one that you managed to hang on to.

No more zeal. No more ideas. No more fire.

What happened?

You’ve just been slapped with the Post-Conference Reality Check (PCRC).

There are a number of ways PCRC could manifest. The speaker’s advice didn’t match your market. Your promising contacts ghosted you. Your revolutionary proposals fell on deaf ears.

You tried to move the mountain, but couldn’t overcome the inertia. You’re stuck in the status quo. Your ideas are just piled by the wayside, forgotten.

Is it a rotten feeling? Heck yes.

Is it avoidable? Absolutely.

You just need to be smart about how you approach it.

Screen Your Speakers

Most conferences have so many sessions it’s impossible to attend them all. I used to choose on the basis of which had the most interesting or relatable title. But as the saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the author, instead.

Look at the speaker closely. Not their name recognition–it’s a big industry and it’s impossible to know everybody–but their specialization and work history.

For example, I attended a “Content that Rocked the Revenue Stream” session that had sounded like a must-watch for a B2B content marketer like myself. But it was taught by an ad agency Creative Director. He showed interesting videos and IG stories, but I couldn’t use any of it.

On the other hand, the session with the bland-as-beige title “Strategic Insights from Three-Point Data Analysis” actually changed the way I leveraged data-driven content strategies. It was run by a Content Director with a data science background, and she was able to successfully make use of this previous experience in her marketing role.

Most (if not all) speakers will have a LinkedIn profile. Take the time to look them up and visit their company websites when you plan your conference agenda. That way, there’s less risk of you coming back to the office with unusable information.

Don’t Gush to Co-workers

It’s okay for you to be on cloud nine after the conference. In fact, that’s what conferences want you to feel.

What’s not okay is forcing that enthusiasm down other people’s throats. You might think you’re just telling people about your week, but what other people are hearing is “I just had a company-paid vacation while you were stuck here.”

This is especially true for events like INBOUND and DreamForce, where they put ridiculous amounts of money behind entertainment. I mean come on: DreamForce has a frickin’ party guide.

That’s a quick way of building up resentment towards your post-conference revelations.

Save your gushing for social media. When people ask, assume they’re asking out of politeness and respond accordingly. Wait for them to show genuine interest before you start bringing out the really juicy anecdotes.

It’s okay to show excitement when you talk to your manager about the trip, but express more enthusiasm for how the company would be able to benefit from what you learned. The possibilities will infect your boss with your energy, which you’ll then be able to channel into support for whatever new initiatives you want to introduce.

Don’t Rock the Boat (Yet)

Don’t be that person who runs into the marketing room yelling “Stop the presses! Stop the presses!”

Abrupt change will almost always be met by strong resistance. They don’t even need a reason to object. People will resist change just because they can.

Besides, you don’t want to rip up your old workflow and introduce sweeping changes, only to discover your brilliant idea doesn’t work as well as you thought it would. Might be a little hard to backtrack at that point.

Set up small-scale experiments instead. Change your keywords for a single campaign. Create a new email subject line for a small segment of your users. A/B test a single page on your site. Get a trial version of some new software and ask one or two of your team members to test it.

Run these experiments for a while (gathering as much hard data as you can) and compare them to your status quo. Then you can approach management with a stronger case for change.

Set Goals and KPIs

What are you trying to accomplish at the conference?

Yes, you’re only attending and not exhibiting, but the question still applies. You can’t just attend “for the lulz” when the company is speding thousands of dollars on a single ticket, plus food and loding and transportation.

Before you even click “buy,” get your list of conference goals together. This list could include:

burning questions to answer,
specific people you want to meet,
contacts from a particular industry,
exhibitors to visit,
bars to hit (okay, maybe not that last).

The point is, having these goals in hand will help you to stay focused and not get distracted by all the glitz and glam. You’ll be able to pick sessions intelligently and isolate the people you want to meet the most.

Then, when your manager asks, you’ll be able to tell him just how fruitful your conference stay really was.

So basically…

The post-conference reality check will only be a problem if you let it. Plan your trip properly, set expectations, and act in line with your goals, and you’ll come back to establish a new reality, and not falling victim to the status quo.

Excelsior!

Up Next: Help! My Boss is a Marketing Skeptic!