Bringing in the marketing orientation to our sales-driven company

Question: One of your columns said that a sales-driven company should convert its marketing department into a marketing services department to give people in the organization a marketing orientation. But we remember that you gave that same prescription to a reader whose sales-driven company has a sales department that, however, was often in conflict with the marketing department. You said then that by having instead a marketing services department, the role of marketing becomes clear to everyone and that’s “to be in the service of Sales.”  We remember that’s how you put it.

Our situation is different. We have no marketing department, only a sales department. However, our CEO recently attended a top management seminar where he learned that for long-term growth and success, we should have a marketing department so that “the entire company gets driven by the marketing orientation that’s more long-term than the immediate short-term preoccupation with Sales.”

Please tell us if our CEO’s choice for us to have a marketing department is the best way for us to gain a company-wide marketing orientation. Or will you still prescribe for us the creation of a marketing services department?

Answer: You’re correct about that prescription we gave and about the case it was meant for. That you do not yet have a marketing department actually makes a whole lot of difference. Here’s why.

In the case of a company that already has a marketing department in a sales-driven organization, the immediate issue revolves around what to do with that department and its people. The situation limits your options.

In your case, because you don’t have to bother with an existing marketing department, there is no such immediate issue.

You can explore more options than just having a marketing services department instead of a marketing department.

What other option or options should you think about? Here’s a recent live case for you to consider and think about. It involves Cisco Systems Inc., or Cisco for short.

Cisco is a huge company with its head office in San Jose, California.  Its original incorporation papers show that its main purpose is “designing, manufacturing and selling of networking equipment.” This more traditional side of its business focused on selling to other companies and enterprises “routing, switching and security products and services.”

On May 13, 2011, The Wall Street Journal was critical of Cisco and said that “the problem with Cisco is marketing.”

This was the Cisco problem because the company was getting the bulk of its revenue from federal, state and local government contracts that Cisco obtains via “aggressive sales efforts.”

Those efforts were not marketing at all, said WSJ, but were only selling.

If your CEO is a WSJ reader and had read this news item, then most likely he would believe what it said about “the Cisco problem.” This is because there are businessmen who believe that Marketing is superior to Sales.

Presumably your CEO assumes this to be true.

There are of course instances where this is true but there are just as many (if not more) cases where the assumption is challenged.

The continuing success of Cisco challenges the truth of the assumption and offers another viable option to you about having a company-wide marketing orientation.

So what specifically did Cisco do about Marketing and Sales? To start with, we should be clear that Cisco regards itself as sales-driven.  However, this sales orientation does not mean that the company and its Sales people see marketing as unimportant. To Sales in particular, marketing is all-important and critical. To understand this, just consider the following “support services” that Cisco makes available to its sales channels.

The first of these is the “Campaign Builder.” This support service is directed at the sales department. Its intent is to help the Cisco sales engineers “create their own customized marketing materials based on the latest Cisco templates, including e-mails, direct mail and seminar invitations to support Sales’ latest campaigns.”

Here’s the second one and it’s addressed to the needs of its “business partners and resellers.” It’s called the “Cisco Partner Marketing.” This is a support service providing “Cisco partners and resellers” all the marketing information that they would need to succeed in “selling Cisco techniques and solutions.”

So what do these two major Cisco support services mean? What do they say about the Cisco option in gaining a company-wide marketing orientation particularly with the sales department? It’s obvious what this alternative is.

So to gain a company-wide marketing orientation, here are your options.

The first is to convert a marketing department into a marketing services department when you already have a marketing department. The second is to set up a marketing services department in the service of Sales when there’s no marketing department yet. The third option is Cisco’s way.  This is to empower the sales department and its sales reps or engineers with the marketing skills. Incidentally, this empowerment process is now one of the more popular in-house training seminars of the Senior MRx-er.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!