Sales + Marketing = SMARKETING = Business Success

Sales vs. Marketing - it's the "Great Divide" in many organizations. Why should you cross this divide (and get rid of the "vs.")? It's simple: improved sales, higher return on resources, and ultimately business growth.

In Sales 2.0: How Will It Improve Your Business?, Pelin Wood Thorogood and Gerhard Gschwandtner write  "Sales 2.0 empowers sales and marketing to work together like a beehive. The sole purpose of the worker bees and the drones is to continually execute a set of compatible processes that have only one purpose: to keep the queen bee happy. If the queen is not happy, the future of the hive is in jeopardy. Likewise, if the processes and technologies of a sales and marketing organization are not optimized and synchronized in a way that keeps the customers happy, then the company is in trouble."

Or put another way, Marketing is everything an organization does to reach out to and generate interest among prospects. Sales is everything an organization does to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract. Both are necessities to the success of a business. You cannot do one without the other. And by strategically combining both efforts, organizations will experience business growth.

Here at Glance, Sales and Marketing works in lockstep -- creating all lead generation and sales conversion programs together -- in fact, we've taken to calling ourselves the Smarketing Team. I've learned more about Sales here than anywhere I've ever worked -- and one big reason is that Sales and Marketing physically sits next to one other. Yup, my desk in our renovated mill building, is right next to Mike and Tom's desks, so that I can hear them talking to prospects and customers all day long. Understanding first-hand what their day is like, helps me design more successful lead generation programs -- leads which they are ultimately responsible for converting! Similarly, they see how much time I invest on our social media, thought leadership, email nurturing, and advertising efforts, and thus can help me design programs which have the greatest sales ROI.

For business success in your organization, invite the Marketing and Sales teams into each other's worlds -- and become SMARKETING!

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-- Carla Gates, Director, Marketing