Tag Archives: Distinct

Should You Combine Sales and Marketing? Five Points

Situation: A company is considering combining its marketing and sales teams. The company’s overall objective is to expand their marketing presence and to bring on new customers. Some team members believe that these two functions are distinct, while others believe that they should work in tandem or even be combined. What do others think about these options? Should you combine sales and marketing?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The skill sets required to create and operate an effective marketing effort are different from those required to create and operate an effective sales organization.
  • Sales and Marketing are two different sides of the same coin – they complement each other but are distinct.
  • Direction begins with the CEO; however it is imperative to make certain that everyone in the organization buys into both this direction and the organization to achieve it.
  • Some feel that it is not a good idea to have one person covering the role of Sales and Marketing. Sales is tactical while Marketing is strategic. It is Sales’ job to implement the Marketing Strategy and report back what is working and what is not. Marketing’s job is to take the feedback from Sales into account and revise the strategy accordingly.
  • Challenges which can create a constant battle between marketing and sales are due to:
    • Lack of common direction, and
    • Poor or inconsistent communication between Sales and customer on one side and Sales and Marketing on the other.
    • These challenges need to be resolved to have an effective Sales + Marketing organization.

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How Many Web Sites Should One Company Have? Three Thoughts

Situation: A company has two businesses in different locations serving different sets of customers in two separate markets. The CEO is evaluating whether it makes more sense to have one umbrella web site with pages for each of the two businesses, or to create two complete web sites with different URLs. How many web sites should a small business have, and why?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The first question is whether you call both businesses the same or different names. Many small companies have separate businesses at different sites, and just differentiate the businesses through division names. Moreover, because you use the same company name for both businesses, you want to make it easy for customers to find your web sites. This argues for at least a single splash page, listed under your current company URL.
  • There are many corporations with diverse, unrelated businesses. Generally, these corporations don’t have any problem having a general web site, with separate links to the individual division web sites where customers and partners can drill down to detail specific to each division. The advantage to this strategy is that by having one corporate site, the larger entity strengthens its own market presence.
  • Given that the advice of the group is to have a single splash page how do you construct it?
    • You want to prominently feature your company name on the splash page, but not to include much detail. Maybe just an overall positioning message that expresses your core values or a distinctive visual that shows what you do.
    • On the splash page, create two links with distinctive pictures and names that enable your customer to easily go to the side of your business that interests them.

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