Want to know the secret of world-class sales organizations? A new study finds the key is executive leaders are actively engaged in Sales.
The study by Miller Heiman, with key findings reported in MarketingProfs , reinforces the wisdom that leaders must be your best sales reps.
Therein lies a big opportunity for marketers to add value and visibility. Executives need our help to make their time spent with customers productive. They may hear from Sales what their individual clients want from the company executives. But it takes Marketing to create ammunition from the perspective of the customer and the market. Presentations, collateral, analysis, and proposals that make company leaders successful. Senior management and Sales will love Marketing.
My co-authors and I wrote in Marketing Champions (Wiley 2006) that Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE spent hours every day with customers. When executives see their role as “chief growth officer,” they stay active in Sales.
Are your execs selling? Does Marketing facilitate this activity? If so, how?
Tags: Leadership, Marketing
I recently wrote an article (http://bit.ly/ccJlQN) off of the Miller Heiman study suggesting that marketing does in fact need to take a role in insuring a world class sales organization is supported by a world class marketing organization.
There is a great opportunity for the CMO to take a more active, and in fact proactive role in sales enablement. By developing a rich data capability, CMO’s make great strides by building intelligence into the front end and back end of the sales process.
This makes a lot of sense. If the management sells they understand the customer; if management does not sell, they can get out of touch.
There is nothing like sales in the trenches to see reality.