Marketing serves two purposes in the B2B world: (a) grow and nurture the company’s communities and (b) increase the sales pipeline. And these days you can find advice at every corner on how to align your sales and marketing teams.

I keep hearing (and reading) horror stories of the marketing vs. sales throw down in companies. But truth be told, I have yet to witness this kind of animosity and frustration first hand. I don’t doubt the storytellers’ truths, and I’m certainly early enough in my career that I can’t speak to just how prominent of a problem it is. But what I can speak to is how learning sales, and spending 18 months in a sales department, made me a better marketer.

In my experience, the sales vs. marketing tug-of-war didn’t exist mostly because marketing (as we discuss it) didn’t exist. It’s hard for two departments to be at odds when the one is just a “pretty it up” department with no real purpose to the end game. As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve found this is true of many small-t0-mid size businesses (SMBs). After all, when you’re tiny, you’re worried about the grind and the quick sell. You need money to make money, and you’re on a tight and fast budget in the early days (or weeks or years). Marketing, as we know it, is not a quick sale. It’s a marathon not a sprint. And SMBs don’t have the stamina for a marathon yet.

But the second a small business crosses into the threshold of turning a decent profit is when marketing starts to bloom. It’s also the perfect time for to-be marketers (or even the more experienced among us who never got a taste of the sales side of things) can learn the most.

5 Things I Learned from Sales

  1. Revenue makes or breaks a company.

    Don’t believe me? Ask any CEO whose company is in the red. Without revenue there are no products, services, office space, or employees. If you aren’t focused on the bottom line, you aren’t going to have a job for very long.

  2. Growing and keeping a client base takes a whole lot more than a first sale.

    It’s exciting to close that first deal and cash your first check. But if you want repeat business, or to earn new business through the best means possible (referrals!) you need to continue to nature your relationship with the client/customer. Sales people know this best because their compensation is often commission based. The less repeat business you have, the harder you have to work to hunt. The mark of the best Account Executives is client nurturing and relationship building. Marketers should take the same principles to heart to develop and nurture the front end of the pipeline.

  3. Data-driven isn’t just a catchphrase, its the way of life.

    Quotas and sales goals are often the reality for sales teams. With revenue as the true definer of success of sales, it’s imperative that sales keep up with their metrics. How much are they closing? How many raw leads do they need to convert to closed won opportunities? Better yet, what IS your conversion rate? Where do you spend your time? Where is the biggest ROI? These are all questions sales departments deal with regularly. Marketing, on the other hand, doesn’t always come up against these pressures. We should, though.

  4. Sales people aren’t needy. They have pressures marketers rarely know.

    Marketers are usually pretty lucky in the salary department: we’re salaried. If we have variable compensation, it’s usually in the form of bonuses and not part of our regular pay schedule. We also rarely have to answer directly to our angry clients or get the cold shoulder from an irritated prospect. That’s changing with the golden era of digital, and we could stand to take some notes from our friends in sales.

  5. Sales teams are the marketers’ first clients.

    If sales and marketing are truly to align, then we (marketers) need to remember that sales are our clients. They aren’t “those people on the other side of the cube”. We owe them leads…and quality ones at that. Everything we do is to the end of helping sales close their deals. In that way, we are consultants and sales are our clients. We need to listen to them and acknowledge the issues they put before us.