Marketing and Sales are the two primary revenue-driving departments of any organization. So it is paramount that these two departments connect each other well in order to succeed. Experts call it the Sales and Marketing conundrum, those who excel in untangling this problem are the winners. Organizations weigh up different structural options to streamline the process and activities of both the department. Some will treat both as the same function while others consider it as two, both has its pros and cons. What really matters is to eliminate the divide, align the goals and targets, streamline the metrics etc.
What about a startup? Treating Marketing and Sales as a separate entity is can go wrong set up in its nascent stage. Both have to go hand in hand and focus should be on the sales-qualified pipeline, improved revenue and engagement margin. Metrics like revenue and margin has to be the focus of the marketing team as well along with metrics such as, say, page impressions, click-throughs, sign ups, video views or downloads.
The structure should focus on creating a culture built around :
- Driving the growth
- Focus on achievements
- Aim for the targets
- Involvement in all stages of the sales cycle
The Split - When?
According to Tony Joseph - Client Engagement Manager at Fingent, The ideal time for a startup to split sales and marketing is when they have a comfortable number of active users or recognition in the market. Here, the objectives of the company will change. The organization should develop a short-term and a long-term aim. The short-term aim is to keep the engines running–this falls on the sales team. This means ensuring that it is easy for customers to adopt your product (or avail your service–whichever the case may be).
The marketing team, on the other hand, should focus on the long-term aim–be relevant in the market. Marketing team must track market trends, a change in consumer behavior, make it easy for customers to access your product/service and keep up with the industry trends. Marketing needs to continuously reach out to the market and keep up their product’s (or service’s) the top of the mind recall.
Getting stuck on either one can be disastrous for a startup. Focusing only on longer-term goals can drive you to financial ruin early; unless you have deep pockets. Closing sales and gaining customers are just as important as marketing yourself. Similarly, only focusing on acquiring customers puts a myopic vision of what the product needs to achieve 5-10 years down the line. You can quickly become irrelevant.
Admittedly this is not an easy scale to balance, but one that is critical to your business growth. The secret here is to well define your objectives and have your teams follow them consistently. Both the sales and marketing teams must work in tandem, without obstructing each other’s priorities, to achieve this harmony.
When should a startup decide to split marketing and sales?
Anyone who is being involved extensively with sales and marketing for a couple of years would say that it is best to have separately dedicated resources for sales and marketing right from the start i.e. even before you launch the product It certainly helps to build strategies way before your product hits the market and lay out the foundation, so that the scaling of the team becomes easier as the product grows.
Sales and marketing processes have changed over the years considerably; from direct pitching to social selling, trying to give a very unique and personalized experience to customers. And with that, the sales and marketing functions have evolved as well requiring unwavering focus, industrious planning and execution. Which ultimately calls for the precise splitting of responsibilities right from the start to avoid wastage of effort and misdirection
How would splitting marketing and sales be effective for a startup?
According to Paul James, Marketing Lead at Fingent, For a startup, it is essential to build visibility as well as get early adopters for the product. If starting from scratch, there would be tonnes of effort that has to go into marketing as well as sales to even rise above the horizon and get in front of your customers. If the budget permits, It would be great setting up separate teams handling sales and marketing, so you have a very focused effort going in and have resources on-board with relevant experience in their core responsibilities helping you build processes and teams.
What happens when a startup does not make the split on time?
Well, for like any job function or resource, being able to focus is absolutely necessary for optimum efficiency and output. If you have the majority of your team members handling cross-functional responsibilities, they would be able to allocate very less time for their core responsibilities. Also, accountability becomes a challenge especially with people handling responsibilities outside of their core area of expertise.
But said that, it is not wise to run the sales and marketing teams as two isolated units. Essentially both the sales and marketing team work towards the same goal but adopt different paths that criss-cross often. Organizations always believe both teams should work together as a single cohesive unit constantly exchanging feedback and learning from each other, but at the same time, clear functional boundaries and responsibilities being defined.