Authored by:Indusekhar Chandrasekhar (INDU)
It’s every company’s biggest existential angst: of Marketing wanting to do so much – but Sales asking the question “show me the money?” With secular and optimistic claims of both, “being joined at the hip” or “two sides of the same coin” floating all around, the fact remains that the two very often don’t see eye-to-eye – but… Why?
Attribute it to that grand conflict of the right and the left brain – the great divide between the tribe that thinks it knows how to do it and the tribe that does it. Of a tribe that believes that the “journey is the destination” and another that believes that “ends justify the means”… and the tribe that wants things to “gestate” and another that “wants the baby now”!
While insults trade on the “Inertia of Marketing” or the “Myopia of Sales” – failures often tantamount to who’s to blame more. The “tutu… main main” of every review is a repeated play of a battle that nobody wins.
But, there’s something to be said about conditioning, which the business conversations refuse to allude to. Of a world riddled by the pursuit of valuation before value, or taking before giving, of counting before hatching. In the new order, Sales takes precedence over everything else – because that’s what rings the registers. And this creates the opportunity for the “New Leader”, who is not led into the temptation of short-term titillation that Sales provides, and is willing to pause to perfect, to build to last.
And talking about being joined at the hip – I did my own little validation on stories of conjoined twins: http://diply.com/abby-brittany-conjoined-twins-facts?config=20 a research that threw me to the reflection of how things weren’t so easy with Abby and Brittany – two beautiful women conjoined, but with a mind of their own: “Abby loves mathematics and Brittany loves to write” – obviously one would’ve been in Sales and the other in Marketing. Their need to synchronise was a matter of survival. Playing that metaphor in the world of Marketing and Sales, a clear articulation that coordination is a coefficient for survival – might just easily bridge the cankerous divide. As it would be there’s room for a redefinition: East is East and West is West and the twain shall only meet when it’s driven by the best.
Marketing and Sales tango only when driven by leaders who “get it” – who understand that Marketing sows and Sales reaps, Marketing creates and Sales executes, that Marketing finds and Sales closes.
If John Donne (https://interestingliterature.com/2016/02/23/10-john-donne-poems-everyone-should-read/) was still around this could be another perfect case for an erotic play of verse:
“For God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love. If Marketing was romance and Sales was sex. Isn’t it better to make love with the one you love, than vex.”
Marketing and Sales indeed need to fall in love!
Mr. Indusekhar Chandrasekhar (INDU) is a Brand Marketing Expert with over two decades across industries including Technology, Media and Entertainment, VC/PE and Start-ups.
