Customer Acquisition: Is it a sales or marketing task?

Since 2009, we have seen a dramatic decrease in sales performance due to our economic crisis. Many companies have cut their costs – including R&D and marketing budgets – to the bone. And contrary to past predictions, sales figures are not returning to pre-crisis level as quickly as anticipated. All the while in every industry, a thinner and over-worked sales force has been trying to make miracles happen. The results, as we have seen in the past three years, have been less than rewarding.

But who is really in charge of customer-acquisition: Marketing or sales professionals? The answer: Both are. Marketing and sales work in tandem, and they need each other’s support in order to be successful. If your sales force is deprived of marketing dollars and up-to-date tools, it is difficult to predict whether they will be able to perform as well as expected. Conversely, if your marketing department lacks the help provided by a passionate sales team, it will be much more challenging for them to plan and execute successful initiatives.

Although it is understandable that companies probably need to trim budgets in order to better navigate our current economic crisis, I would strongly caution against cutting mission-critical budgets (such as R&D, marketing, and sales). Without tightly connected teams communicating customer reactions to R&D, who in turn share key product features with marketing, a company can quickly lose its competitive advantage and become stale. Smart and strategic companies know that in order to be able to thrive in hard economic times, you need to provide your team with the resources and staffing they require.

But there is another side to the coin: If marketing and development are depleted of funds and are overstretched with administrative work, there is a strong likelihood that all strategic information found by the sales professionals working in the trenches will be archived in a ‘whenever we get to it’ folder, and eventually forgotten. The issue here is one of time and motivation; when professionals become overwhelmed and overworked, they become less productive. For example, marketing folks begin recycling old campaigns and materials to save money, without cross-referencing them with fresh information and data to ensure timeliness. The result is predictable: The organization ends up marketing old ideas in a market dominated by consumers whose tastes and expectations may have changed in the intervening years. Sales drop. Budgets are slashed even further. It is a difficult cycle to escape from.

Another crucial factor that many organizations fail to perform adequately is planning. Planning and workload management are vital for success, especially considering that most organizations nowadays are working with a greatly reduced work force. Much in the same way that budget cuts can lead to less-than-ideal campaign execution, a lack of marketing and sales planning typically results in last minute products with sub-optimal results: Sales people get ‘half-baked’ collateral and repurposed advertising campaigns from overstretched marketers with no time or budget in their hands. The result is clear –sales folks fail to meet their goals and consumer perception of your organization might be labeled as ‘outdated’.

My suggestion: Make sure that your organization has a clearly defined budget – even if it is a small one. In order to succeed as a business, all organizational functions need to be working in an effective and synergized way; and that of course requires funding. America’s workload hasn’t decreased – what has decreased is the work force. Planning – organizational, marketing, and financial – is a necessity, and it must begin at the top with management, and trickle down to all employees. Only then can the organization work in a smarter and more effective way.

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Cíntia is a high-performance, seasoned marketing professional committed to excellence and recognized as a critical thinker who is able to develop compelling and effective promotions. Innovative, motivated and with a strong ability to set her clients' business image apart from the average, she thrives on challenges. Cíntia's proven skills in developing high-impact marketing campaigns on slim budgets has a track record in the various positions she has held in Massachusetts and Maine. Cíntia holds a bachelor's degree in International Management and an MBA with concentration in marketing from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

In 2009 Cíntia founded Pulse Marketing Bangor, located in downtown Bangor, ME. Pulse is a full service marketing and advertising agency servicing clients in New England and abroad. To learn more about Pulse Marketing Bangor and the work of Cíntia Miranda, visit her website @ http://www.pulsemarketingbangor.com, sign-up for her free monthly newsletter, follow her blog http://blog.pulsemarketingbangor.com and join her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PulseMarketingBangor and Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/pulsemarketing.