They Just Don’t Get It

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“They just don’t get it.”

How many times has marketing said that about sales? Organizations tend to put up walls between departments. The one between marketing and sales can be especially difficult to scale, particularly when the topic is following up leads generated by events.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last week’s Synch-Up. That post cited a BtoB study about the link between marketing automation and the sad state of post-event follow up. It seems to me that the bigger issue is – and always has been – the relationship between sales and marketing. The wall still exists but I see evidence that some organizations are working to break it down.

Consider the healthcare organization that created a new lead management position on the event marketing team and filled the spot with a veteran from the sales support/CRM team. And just this week I began working with a technology company that transferred their former event marketing manager to a newly created CRM-integration position on the sales team.

These companies have gone way past “They don’t get it.” They’re investing in systems and in people to make sure that everyone gets what they need, when they need it and in a way that they can act upon it.

What are you doing in your organization to help people “get it?”