Trust between Marketing & Sales

As a follow up to this week's podcast, I thought I would touch on a point I didn't get a chance to include in the podcast itself: the relationship between marketing and sales teams.

In so many organisations, there seems to be trust issues between these two groups of people. Sales don't believe that marketing are pulling their weight and providing enough leads while marketing complains that sales aren't giving them the market feedback to get their job done and improve the effectiveness of the marketing. Neither team seems to trust the other to do their job effectively. We want to teach the other how to do the job.

I don't get it! We're on the same team!

While this trust problem is very common, I didn't experience in early roles. In fact, I always saw a good relationship between sales and marketing and then when things did start to get messy I couldn't believe what I was seeing or hearing.

But things like this are fairly easily fixed. Focus on open communication. Weekly or fortnightly meetings between sales and marketing are a great way for both parties to know what the other is doing. Also, in any campaign make sure that before you start you have set firm goals/benchmarks. That way both sides will know where they stand.

If you are having major trust issues between teams it will not go away overnight. But making things more open and clearly defining objectives will make it easier and should provide the basis for a better relationship in the future.