Sales began thinking of marketing as an administrative function, coming to them for help with every presentation, a new brochure for every prospect, etc. This caused sales to spend too much time creating materials for each prospect instead of filling their pipeline and planning for future sales. It also made it impossible for marketing to keep all materials up-to-date all the time, so now, instead of sales asking for more materials they were complaining about the ones that were out of date or not as ‘fresh’. Finally, it left sales frustrated with the leads they were receiving from marketing, since marketing couldn’t focus on creating sales worthy leads while constantly updating materials.

Also, when a phone number changed or new office opened, the amount of redesign work on the hundreds of documents was almost impossible to update. This created confusion for prospects when receiving incorrect information. This also increased the turnover of designers, because as artists they became frustrated that they weren’t creating new and exciting viral pieces and designs, but instead constantly updating the same documents they had already worked on.

What happens after this is predictable. This poor, reactive marketing often creates a cycle that results in a drop in sales and replacement of marketing and/or sales management, and the disposal of many of the documents that were created to keep sales ‘happy’.

When creating sales enablement tools, the objective is to look at the characteristics of your most qualified or sold leads, and then follow the path those leads took when learning about your company. These are going to be the pieces of collateral that are most successful for sales. And these are the documents that should be updated and frequently refreshed. This can also be done by creating buyer personas and creating materials for those personas. Then marketing must spend time teaching sales how to speak to each of these pieces, so they know all of the materials available to them and how each is properly used. By taking this approach you will not only save marketing valuable time, but also keep sales selling, which is what will truly keep them happy.

1. Company Party Planner

You can coordinate a large trade show with little effort; you can schedule a flawless road show in every city in the country, so obviously you can handle Dylan’s birthday party. And the company holiday party. And Mitchell’s retirement party. And…

2. IT Security

As a marketer you are getting comfortable with cloud computing. Often your emails and your CRM data are held on servers outside your firewalls and accessed over the web. Unfortunately, the head of IT security is not as comfortable. Make sure that when you are working with new SaaS vendors that you loop your IT security mangers in on the decisions and provide them with all the documentation that shows why your company’s data will be safe.

3. CRM Optimization

As a marketer you may rely on a CRM tool to pull data about the success of your campaigns, demographics of your prospects and customers, and sales by product. Since you need this data you will be responsible for make sure the system runs properly and that all users are trained on how to enter data into the system.

4. Powerpoint Pro

It is somewhere written in a sales handbook that all marketers know PowerPoint including how to over-animate, add animal sounds, and incorporate cheesy slide transitions. Since you have the ability to do this, and nothings makes a salesperson happier than tacky moving slides, you will end up helping.

5. Microsoft Office Trainer

Got computer skills? You are going to need to share them. As soon as people find out you know how to use software like Word, Excel, and Outlook you will be helping with fonts, creating formulas, and setting up out-of-office messages.

6. Copyright/Trademark/License protector

Typically marketers are used to protecting brand standards and monitoring how sales uses company content, but marketers also end up watching out for other people’s property and rights as well. This means reviewing sales emails and presentations to make sure pictures used and customer details listed are accurate and are legally allowed to be utilized in your sales promotions.

7.  Customer support

Each day there will be the potential for tens to millions of emails to go out in your name with your email address listed. And the people that receive them won’t necessarily care that you are in marketing and don’t know how to help them with their technical need. This means they will hit reply and ask you their question. At this point you have two options, to either forward the email along or to ask support for help and reply back with the personal service that your customer deserves. I suggest doing the best you can to help every customer possible, because they are the reason you are there to begin with.

8. Salesperson

See customer support above. Sometimes people will email you sales questions. Help as much as you can while engaging sales support. People will be used to seeing your name in emails. Make sure you know you can be reached and that you will help them. Purchasing decisions are often hard, and people want to feel like they are making the right decision so be supportive and helpful.

9. Sales Training

You will be creating materials for sales and they won’t use them unless you train them how to. That means attending sales meetings, sitting in on sales calls, and creating training materials. It also means putting the materials where they need them, and emailing them to them when they ask.

10. Counselor

Often, in Marketing, you are the one common person that works with product development, IT, service and support, finance, and sales. This means when one group doesn’t like what another group is doing you are the one person that will understand the entire situation. This means you will have to play group counselor and team therapist from time to time.

My first interview was with Charlene Goodwin, a marketing expert who works for a major risk management firm.  These are her answers below. 

Proust Questions:

Your most marked characteristic?

When I want something, I do what I need to do to get it – within reason. If it’s at too great a cost, I might decide I don’t want it anymore, but that is the exception. I’ve been known, on more than one occasion to say, “You know what, I want that.” An hour or a day later, there it is.

What do you value in your friends?

Honesty and loyalty. The two values at the crux of any good relationship.

What would you like to be?

Me, just times a thousand. More time to relax, more time to do work, more time to see family and friends.

What natural gift would you most like to possess?

I wish I could draw. I think it’s absolutely amazing how people can draw and create things that they see in their mind, or even physically in front of them. My hangman doesn’t even look respectable on most days.

What is your present state of mind?

I’m feeling very positive. Life is good and things, on a personal level, are falling into place. Even in battle at work I’m okay with people not liking me – primarily because they are sitting at a desk across the country or outside the country. I don’t have awkward tense moments in the office. All I have to do is hang up the phone or close an email. It’s quite liberating. I’m just trying to get my job done and do what is for the greater good of the company.

What is your motto?

When our new head of corporate marketing (at our parent company) suddenly announced the entire organization must print all collateral on A4 paper, I almost lost my mind. My boss reminded me of a great scene from Meatballs, where Bill Murray instructs his team “IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER”. This is my new motto. We can only do so much, so why beat ourselves up or get angry over it? In the end, it’s out of our control. We all have signs now in our offices saying “IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER”. It makes me smile.

Pergolino Questions:

How many emails are in your inbox?

Personal – 256; Work – 255

Guess my threshold is around the same for my work and personal lives..

How much time do you spend learning about new marketing technologies? (Also, how and why?)

Sadly, not enough these days. I try and participate in webinars whenever possible and to keep up with “what’s going on” by reading my MediaPost, MarketingDaily, and Out to Launch emails. Have been so caught up in industry events and learning my current industry in general, that I haven’t had much time for anything else.

What key analytics do you need to do your job well and why?

In my current role, I’m heavily involved in events and communications. I’m worried most about response rates and ROI.

How has social media affected your life and/or business?

Social media has definitely kept me more “in touch” with people than I would otherwise be. I know what’s going on with those that I’d otherwise not talk to, save an email once a year. I was at my first industry conference in February where Twitter was used to keep everyone abreast of things and also to field questions for one of the discussions. I find the insurance industry tends to take a little longer to adopt newer technologies, but I’m looking forward to the continuous progress.

What technology(s) could you not live without?

Intenet, latptop, e-mail, iPhone, Blackberry. That pretty much sums up my every day.

[For B2Bs] Are there any companies or brands out there that you think are doing a really good job promoting themselves on Facebook, with a page, group, etc? Who are they? What do they have in common?

My quick reply:

Hubspot is a pretty active B2B company that is on Facebook. They are not only creating pages, events, ads, etc, but are also leveraging Social Ads. This means that if you become a fan of them they can promote your relationship with them to me. I believe this is proving useful to them.

In social marketing, on sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, I think it’s better to promote your content and thought leadership instead of just ’selling’ and use that content to create brand awareness. These assets can also be used for lead gen if they are gated, but I think it’s still useful when not gated for content like blog postings.

More obviously if you have fans of your brand, people promoting themselves as fans to you may be successful without doing much more than creating a company page and using RSS to update the page with fresh content.

I think we’ll see B2B companies creating contests and incentives soon, similar to those done by B2Cs like Sears and Burger King, to help promote brand awareness.

I posted this here incase anyone I know had additional thoughts that they wanted to share.  Please feel free to post your comments and I will share.  Thanks.

First, the don’ts: 
Other than avoiding the jewelry and candy ideas, I also strongly suggest avoiding this very techie, but very make me want to throw-up gift from Thinkgeek.com.  It’s the 8-Bit Dynamic Life T-shirt that has an animated decal that lights-up when the two shirts are in close proximity. Other than being really ridiculous, the two t-shirts and transmitter will run you over $70 with shipping and batteries.

Now for the great gifts:
I love the idea of a classic mix tape with a modern twist.  Throw a couple of your special songs on this flash drive that looks like a cassette tape and you’re set with a great gift.   This is only one of the great Valentine gifts available at Think Geek.  They also have glasses that make you see hearts, 3-D greeting cards, and a tasty gummy heart.  Okay, now here is the cool part.  I ordered from Think Geek today and was able to get $10 off a $30 purchase with code geekpuzzle and also got a free Annoy-a-tron with code 8LEC.  (This is what motivated this post.)

I also love the different heart shaped flash drive pendants that I’ve seen around.  The Swarovski Heart Ware Vitrail Light USB Memory Key is on the extravagant side, but would look great with the Crystal Rhinestone USB Optical Scroll Mouse.   Like the idea but not the price?  The LoveIn Heart 4G USB Flash Drive has more space and a much lower price. 

Now, if this was a gift for me or if you were buying a gift for someone like me, they would like Wii games, a micro sd card for my (their) curve, and gift certs to their favorite tech stores.  Now none of these are romantic, but they show that you know what the recipient likes, and that’s what’s important, right?

Also, make sure to do a check for an Amazon wish-list for the person.  I have one, and they probably do, too. 

And for the Un-Valentines:  
First, I like the idea of sending any heart related item with a message explaining that said heart is needed by the recipient. I personally know someone that could use this gift, and you probably do, too.  Another way to send your distaste for someone on this special day is with a stuffed venereal disease.  Because, what says love more than a stuffed syphilis doll? Finally, you may want to clearly convey your feelings for the un-valentine by sending them this unique knife holder.