Sales and Marketing

Sales and Marketing is the client-facing part of an organization. Within internal service provides, this may be called "business relationship managers."

Sales and Marketing adds value in two ways:

• It enhances the organization's relationships with clients.

  Sales facilitates effective communications and constructive relationships between clients and everybody in the organization. This is not a single point of contact, but rather a default point of contact.

• It helps clients address their business challenges using the organization's products and services.

  It facilitates the discovery of high-payoff opportunities, and helps clients acquire just the right products and services from the organization's entire catalog. In this way, Sales aligns the organization with clients' strategies and business needs.

In companies, the need for Sales and Marketing is obvious. But this Building Block is equally essential to internal service providers. They have tough competition from decentralization and outsourcing. And despite monopolies in a few areas, they must earn "market share" by developing great relationships with clients.

Beyond just relationship building, an internal service provider must find ways to contribute value to clients' critical challenges and strategic opportunities. Sales provides expertise in the linkage between clients' business and an organization's deliverables, and helps clients discover creative, high-payoff uses of the organization's products and services.

The goal of external Sales is to maximize revenues. But for internal service providers, the goal is not to convince clients to spend more (an expense to the enterprise). Rather, it's to maximize the organization's contributions to clients' success, i.e., to generate the right business and deliver the most value.

External or internal, and whatever the name, great salesmanship focuses on helping clients, not on helping the organization "push" its products and services. In the sales literature, this is termed strategic selling, consultative selling, or partnership selling.

Great relationships are built by understanding what's unique about each client, and connecting clients with the right suppliers in the organization. That's why Sales staff spend most of their time with clients, getting to know the people and their business challenges.

There are five types of Sales and Marketing:

• Account Sales: high-level account representatives who are responsible for entire client accounts, regardless of geography. In companies, these might be called "named account managers," where the accounts are one or more global companies. In internal service providers, these might be the "business relationship managers," where the accounts are one or more business units.

  This is a very senior function. Account Sales professionals can (and should) attend clients' executive-level meetings and credibly discuss business strategies and challenges (without descending into product discussions). They're the kind of people clients would like to hire for senior management positions.

• Retail Sales: available to anyone on demand for business advice and unbiased business diagnoses.

  In companies, this would be the geographic sales force and any retail storefronts for walk-in customers. In internal service providers, these are the default points of contact for clients' inquiries and concerns. They may even manage a showroom or demonstration center.

• Function Sales: experts in clients' professions or business processes, available to help Account Sales (in any territory) with opportunity discovery.

  While Account Sales is the primary representative to a client business unit, when working in, say, the procurement and manufacturing areas, Account Sales may call in a Function Sales professional who specializes in supply-chain issues to help diagnose their strategic requirements.

• Marketing: the one-to-many functions that coordinate communications with the client community, for example, with brochures, newsletters, awareness events, and public relations. They also offer peers within the organization help with marketing planning. And they offer market research services that answer questions about what sets of clients think (eg, customer satisfaction surveys and demand forecasts).

• Sales Support: sales methods and tools, sales training, account management, business analysts, proposal writing, territory planning, metrics.

In all its forms, Sales and Marketing facilitate partnerships with clients, and link clients' business challenges to the organization's various products and services.