We talk a lot about B2B and B2C marketing here, but is sales just the lonely stepchild at the end of the inbound marketing funnel? Is marketing becoming so automated you don't need marketers anymore? The dynamics of sales and marketing have changed radically in recent years, putting far more emphasis on relationship building throughout the sales pipeline and turning classic sales and marketing processes on their aging heads.
I know I'm going to get a lot of classic sales people and die-hard marketers throwing darts and citing their tried-and-true methods for capturing leads and converting them to customers. I'm counting on that actually. I say it's time to throw out all of that garbage and start getting real about what sales and marketing means these days:
We think before we act - yes you heard that right. We make ourselves available instead of hunting for prospects. We listen. We help. We educate. We present new ideas and we enable people to solve their own problems. We figure out how our stuff can help them do that and we offer it at a reasonable price.
This all sounds like pie-in-the-sky, but is it? I think the dinosaurs in the Jurassic age looked at the little mammals scurrying around and laughed at them. Yeah, there's a meteor on the way, and it's called Sales 2.0 or Marketing 2.0 or just plain common sense.
O.K. let fly those darts all you sales and marketing gurus.
Photo credit: Jeremy Burgin