Send your marketing person packing
Posted on June 23, 2008
Many small to medium size companies have a “marketing department.” Some mistakenly call their sales staff the marketing department. But that’s not it.
Dig a little deeper. Wind you way down a dark hall. If you find a hunched-back person, her face blanched with desperation and her eyes blood shot from too little sleep and too much coffee, you’ve found it; the Marketing Department.
You might call her a graphic designer or communications producer because she designs all your brochures, websites, videos, and any other tools your sales staff needs. But if she is coming up with ideas that help you reach your customers - that connect with their needs and wants - then she IS your marketing department.
So give her a break. Let her out of her cave for a while. Send her packing.
Send her on sales calls with your best salesperson. Have her meet your best clients. In other words, let her have a relationship with the people she builds all those tools for - your customers.
If she doesn’t come to understand your customers (and potential customers) then all she will be doing is designing, photographing, and writing for your sales staff.
Here’s the most important advise you can give her as she steps out of the cave, squinting at the mid-day sunlight (which she hasn’t seen for years). Tell her to look at your company from the customer’s point of view. Pretend she doesn’t work for you, but that you work for her as her vendor. What does the world look like through the customer’s eyes?
I promise you, she will come back from these trips with a head full of ideas. And those ideas, turned into the sales tools she produces, will make you money.
And when that happens, give the kid a raise . . . or at least a room with a window.
Filed Under Marketing Tips |
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