I gave a lunch and learn-type presentation last week to my company about marketing.  My goal was to communicate that there really is a method to the madness and that a simple framework can be applied to drive activities and results.  I picked this framework up some time ago and have used it to varying degrees over the years making some tweaks along the way.  It revolves around four key levers:

1.  Market presence
2.  Getting in front of decision makers
3.  Product line coverage
4.  Winning business

This is a bit self-deprecating in order to entertain my audience and hopefully it will stand on its own without my voice over.

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After spending a bit of time building and developing marketing and product management processes and teams in early stage companies, I believe if you have a process view of how all this works you understand that there are natural points of friction that exist on two sides of the marketing organization – one with sales and the other with engineering. 

My recent participation in Scale Venture’s Sales 2.0 event made be think more about this and thought I would lay out some thoughts that came out of that event in a post.  If you know me, you know I use the word “systemic” a bit as problems are based on root causes not symptoms and, more often that not, those causes are linked causing a systemic problem.

I’m going to split this into two posts starting with Marketing & Sales.  Although I have had direct account responsibility in my past and believe that it is everyone’s job to help acquire new customers, my view is skewed from the marketing point of view and I am certain that someone in sales would populate this list differently so I look forward to your comments.

Sales says about Marketing

• Not enough leads
• Leads aren’t qualified enough – just because marketing generated it does not mean it is for real
• Spending time on leads that require significant amounts of nurturing and development that do not align with their compensation plans
• Marketing spending time on things that don’t directly lead to the acquisition of new customers
• Marketing being out of touch with what customers really want or are saying
• Insufficient or no messaging and content for specific customer needs/pain at each stage of the sales cycle
• The lack of a defined, repeatable, and dependable sales process (also applies to target market/business problem)
• Lack of education, collateral, and support to get deals done (especially field staff)
• A product roadmap that is out of synch with customer needs/wants

Marketing says about Sales

• Failure to update the CRM system in a timely and accurate manner
• No visibility or feedback on what happens with generated leads (reference above)
• No win/loss analysis to highlight why a loss occurred (product, price, message) or why it was won
• Not spending time on and following up with leads that require nurturing and development
• A focus only on the next commission vs. the strategic goals of the company
• Inability to stand alone on sales calls and carry the company message and value proposition including heavy dependency on marketing personnel to move a deal forward
• Difficulty in navigating an ambiguous and undefined sales process in the quest to find the repeatable process (as well as help design it)

I’m not saying that any of these are easily resolved, but knowing that they will most certainly arise puts you in a position to plan accordingly.  Having this additional perspective will also help you navigate the “friction” that will come up as you go to market, build and launch products, acquire customers, etc. 

At a minimum, the next time you think sales isn’t doing their job or marketing is out of touch, stop for a moment and reflect on the fact that this type of friction is natural and is going on in every company.  It will definitely lighten the mood a bit and let you power through the tasks at hand.

In case you missed it, we are on the cusp of a very exciting race to become the next President of the United States.  Sorry, I'm not running this year but two other eager fellas are.  I try to steer clear of politics on this blog as that is not the purpose here, but did want to expand on a theme that I picked up recently.

Regardless of the outcome, what we will see play out over the next 5-ish months is a massive amount of money funneling into a variety of new forms of communication, outreach, and sharing.  Both campaigns want their messages out there and want to be able to immediately respond or attack based on the mud slinging of the day.  Elections are, after all, just really big marketing campaigns.  You are trying to sell a product (a candidate) to a market (US voters).

Keep an eye on the ones that are used most and most effectively.  This is a real-time market trial of every new new thing as "funding" for their use will not be a problem.

Here's a pretty interesting story from Newsweek that compares and contrasts the blogging efforts in both camps.  I am currently subscribed to both via my RSS reader and will agree that one is more structured and mechanical while the other is (recently) a bit more conversational.

Great post by Paul Freet from Georgia Tech's Venture Lab about the "3rd product."  I like this approach as it helps frame vision vs. practical realities.  Essentially look at your big idea as the third product you release.  What is your first one going to do given constraints on time and resources and the need to generate real customer interest?  It is important to have a grand product vision but it is also important to know where to start to deliver meaningful value.  Sometimes you must crawl before you run and this is especially true for the first release in your product lifecycle.