Alfred E. Townsend is President of the TMC Group in Boca Raton, Florida, but his business frequently takes him across North America, Asia and Europe. Why? Because his specialty is helping financial services firms create synergy between marketing and sales—and it’s a challenge of global proportions.

“My clients range from a Spanish mega-bank to a niche hedge fund in Canada, but the problems I see are universal. Sales and marketing need to work toward a common goal. It sounds elementary, but very few firms are getting it right,” says Townsend.

Here are some common pitfalls, and what Townsend says can be done to fix them:

Lack of strategy
“Management is always asking why the sales team isn’t more effective. But often, what’s missing is a top-down strategy. There’s usually a business plan, but rarely do you see a well thought-out brand strategy that outlines how to consistently communicate a firm’s value in the marketplace,” says Townsend.

He says sales teams tend to focus on short-term market dynamics and expect marketing teams to respond immediately. This can result in efforts that are reactive and unfocused.

“Part of the solution is to get marketing and sales on the same page and working together to align their efforts with the overall business objectives of the organization. That’s step one.”

Poor communication
According to Townsend, step two is to end the practice of having sales and marketing speak "two different languages."

“Marketing often has an approach that I would call theoretical or scientific, whereas sales is based on the practical issue of getting people to take action based on a certain product. Success happens when the two worlds come together. Sales can provide the practical viewpoint, and marketing can use that insight to develop appropriate solutions,” he says.

Townsend says marketing people shouldn’t simply take input from sales and surprise them a few weeks later with a finished sales tool or marketing campaign. They need to continually collaborate to make sure the content is exactly what sales needs to do their job.

Good marketing materials, bad sales skills
“Some sales people are little more than walking brochures,” says Townsend. “They have a tendency to blame their materials for poor sales results. But often, the marketing materials are perfectly good, and it’s the salespeople who need to learn how to make them relevant to their audience and the prevailing market conditions.”

Townsend says that, even with the best marketing materials, there might be only a paragraph or two that’s actually relevant to a particular audience or market scenario. It’s the salesperson’s job to assess the audience and use the piece selectively.

“It’s how the salesperson applies the material that makes all the difference,” he says. “The salesperson has to find out what the audience needs, then know which marketing materials to apply.”

Good sales skills, bad marketing materials
“It happens all the time: good salespeople will go and basically make up their own marketing materials,” says Townsend. “Marketing people absolutely hate it, not to mention the fact that it could lead to a compliance nightmare.”

The mistake marketing makes is not listening to the good salespeople and understanding what they need so they can provide them with the right material.

“At the same time, salespeople have to avoid thinking only about the short-term. Together with marketing, they have to consider how future events might affect the product or the company and develop materials that will help salespeople sell no matter what the market is doing,” he says.

With proper collaboration between sales and marketing, Townsend says firms can go to market with a strategic message that is unified and timeless.

Our view
At Wickware Communications, we pride ourselves on bringing both sales and marketing perspectives to the table. In many firms, sales and marketing report to different areas of the company that may have competing agendas, but bringing these two teams together is almost certain to pay rewards.