If recognizing the problem is half the battle, I am happy to report that we are clearly there.  No matter whom I asked, the response was loud, clear, and uniform: IT’S A BIG PROBLEM.  
 
After so much has been said and written about this issue, how come we have so little to show for?  Are we looking for solutions in all the wrong places?  Or could it be that we are looking at an unsolvable problem? 
 
Chris Maher is the Founder and President of Fosforus, an agency focused on B-to-B marketing.  Chris is also a marketing innovator that has worked with some of the most successful enterprise software companies, including i2, SAP, and many smaller ones.  In his poetic language, Chris attributes the "toxic gulf" that separates sales from marketing in many organizations to lack of respect on both sides: “Too often, there is not only NO respect, but disrespect.  Poor marketers resent inputs from the sales team because they come from ‘tactical monkeys.’  Poor sales executives resent the efforts of marketers because they come from ‘ivory towers.’”
 
I have to warn you in advance that despite the fact that I spoke with some of the smartest and most experienced people in the enterprise software industry, this article will probably raise more questions than provide answers. 
 
Why pursue the issue, you may ask?  Why not just let it continue the way it has for most companies for many years?  To answer this, I will take a diversion from our focus on enterprise software and look at an example from a different industry.  Those of you that are familiar with the Consumer Goods industry are probably familiar with the facts, but others may not. 
 
Consider this: an amount in the order of $100 Billion (yes, you’re reading it correctly) is wasted every year by consumer goods manufacturers due to poor planning and execution of trade promotions, i.e., incentives given by manufacturers to their retail channels.  These days, this is a hot topic of discussion within the consumer goods industry, partially due to regulatory reporting changes that require manufacturers to deduct promotion costs from their revenues.  But for years, the industry has just thrown billion after billion into this black hole called trade promotions and nobody took notice.  Changing the practices that lead to such vast waste is not an easy undertaking.  It will take years to implement, and even longer to bear results. 
 
The lesson here is that certain industry practices may be so deep rooted that most company executives feel too overwhelmed to take them head on.  At the same time, these practices may be so costly, that changing them could really turn the fortunes of a company.  In the consumer goods industry, the $100B figure represents 20% of the industry’s revenue.  Do you have any idea how much the divide between marketing and sales is costing your company?  What if you could add 20% to your company’s top line by solving this problem?  (Read an excellent article on this topic by Scott Santucci below).
 
My goal is to shake the boat a bit, and hopefully get a constructive discussion to continue beyond the anecdotal.  I am not hoping for silver bullets, but maybe if we put our collective minds to it in a more focused manner, we can come up with some ideas that will help us improve the state of the industry. 
 
Is there a reason to keep marketing and sales separate? 
 
This was the first question I asked the people I spoke with.  More so, are the functional responsibilities of the two organizations correctly defined? 
 
Let’s look at a couple of the definitions commonly used to distinguish the two functions:
 

1. Marketing is long-term, sales is short-time.  With enterprise software sales cycles ranging from 6-18 months and marketing cycles shortening thanks to electronic distribution, is this still a valid distinction?  
2. Marketing addresses many prospects, sales is one to one.  As marketing becomes more personalized (one-to-one marketing), is it still a good definition?  Does marketing have no role in supporting individual sales efforts?

 
Most of the software executives I spoke with believe that marketing and sales should be kept separate.  Moshe Ben-Bassat, CEO of ClickSoftware, puts the question in a broader perspective: “Management in general is a spectrum of activities with handshakes up and down the organization as well as horizontally between departments.  It is not only between marketing and sales; similar issues exist between sales engineering and professional services in the transition from pre- to post-sales activities, for example.  The key is clear definitions of who does what and a streamlined handshake process.”
 
Chris Maher points out the value of the different perspectives each of the organizations bring to the table:  “Sales is Indigeny. it brings the native knowledge of the way things are really done.  Marketing is Exogeny, the "outside-in" view of the world.  Marry the two and extraordinary innovations and insights will happen.”
 
David Schapiro from ClickSoftware has been on both sides of the divide.  He too sees the need for each of the functions to learn from each other:  “In the enterprise software world, sales people have to think strategically; at the same time, marketing has to help sales by being more tactical.  But if you combine the two into one organization, the long-term will always be the one sacrificed.”
 
Considering that marketing oversees a broad area of responsibilities, it is easy to see why most people I spoke with support the separation of marketing and sales.  Dan Dolberger, Director of Marketing at Earnix explains:  “While sales and marketing may find themselves stepping on each other's toes with respect to lead generation, they still have very different jobs to do in other aspects of the process. Positioning, market definition, brand building, and competitive analysis should be provided by the marketing function.”
 
Neta Wolf, who has served in both the marketing and sales organizations at ClickSoftware, adds an interesting observation: “We have been successful in places where we’ve been able to blur the boundaries between the organizations, for example, when inside sales works closely with marketing on lead generation.  This may be an indication that the two functions could actually reside within a single organization.”
 
There is no doubt that lead generation is one of the most loaded interaction points between marketing and sales.  Is lead generation the responsibility of marketing, sales, or both?  And since the latter is the case in most companies, how should the two organizations work together to make the process effective and avoid the customary finger-pointing? 
 
This was the next set of questions I posed to my interviewees.  To my surprise, there was a clear common thread and a good measure of practical advice in the answers I received.  Maybe there is hope for fixing the problem after all?!
 
You can read all about it in Part 2 of this article, which will be published in the April issue. And if you’d like to add your opinion, please do not hesitate to contact me anytime.