I said I can help you!

So what’s unquestionably puzzling in this current economic downturn is the question on every marketer’s lips – why aren’t these two teams talking to each other? What has led to this breakdown of communication and what can be done to solve it?

Well, let’s look at this logically and go back to basics. You wouldn’t expect a relay team to rely on one person to win a race, so why rely on a single area of your company to sell your product or service?

Of course, sales and marketing positions have independent roles – yet, they’re each striving towards the same goal. A sales department cannot afford to spend their time getting to know their customers inside out, just as marketers shy away from one-on-one meetings.

Indeed, the problem is not the two departments individual operations, yet the fact that they’re not melding their skills into a double act that could potentially see their business grow with twice the power and dominance at a time of shaky financial stability.

The irony is that the technique businesses need to focus on during a recession is precisely the one that most sales and marketing departments are weakest at – lead generation. In order for this dark art to deliver results, both divisions must pull together seamlessly.

So how do you send this sinking ship back afloat? Well, primarily there needs to be little, or if possible, no slashes through marketing budgets – whatsoever – not even a nip.

Consistency must make up the base of this business model – continuing to push your product, service and brand boldly, whilst retaining the highest level of contact between sales and marketing departments.

Once the communication barrier has been battered and the team is functioning productively as a whole, you’ll start to review the results and realise that those non-existent networks of communication between the sales and marketing departments have actually been detrimental to company performance and crucially affected customer commitment and loyalty.

Yet it’ll all be a learning curve to look back on, since your sales and marketing team is now a united force – with more insight, focus and passion than ever, and equally more capable of delivering effective lead generation campaigns in today’s wavering economic climate.

This simple concept has delivered staggering results

We’re really pleased to announce that we’ve been nominated for the Best Direct & Promotional Strategy at this years’ Drum Marketing Awards. A great achievement considering the tough competition, not to mention a highly esteemed panel of judges.

Our entry, the Paddy Power Cheque Book, a strategy to steal OTC market share from competitors and confirm Paddy Power’s price advantage, delivered demonstrable success. The campaign that included a cheque book mechanic, staff interaction, SMS strategy and vast data capture is now firmly engrained in Paddy Power’s ongoing retail strategy. Contact us for the full story.

The ASA recently confirmed that the atheist campaign, proclaiming “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” received complaints that it broke advertising code on the grounds of substantiation and truthfulness. With some of the complaints being that “It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules.

So, although the ASA has not yet decided whether a formal investigation to see if the campaign has broken the ad code, we are left with a few morsels of food for thought:-

Firstly, substantiation and truthfulness. In the current economic dirge, we all, hopefully, appreciate the importance of brand and product differentiation to ensure we stand above the competition. With better service and better value being all too familiar claims. The heat of the spotlight is never as warm as it is now on brands to ensure they practice what they preach, if you’ll pardon the biblical reference.

Only last week, we heard Christopher Rodrigues of Visit Britain emphasising this point with the claim that the hotel sector could expect 50,000 job losses this year.

Raising service levels and quality of that service is the bed-rock for winning business in tourism. Not forgetting the current state of the sterling with its appeal to our Euro-hoppers, this is a time of great value that we need to embrace.

The outcome is quite simple – those who go the extra mile and get it right will reap the rewards. Ask and listen to what customer’s needs and motivations are and get a true understanding of the value they want and deliver some substantiation. Hang on, that sounds familiar….

And the second food morsel is whether the ASA take the plunge to cast judgement on the probability of God existing or not. Best of luck with that one.