We look forward to returning to Philadelphia to work with teams in the Life Sciences industry on their refined approach as we all move into a new economic climate. Some markets remain hot while others cool off – how will you tailor your approach? We can help. Contact John directly for information on this exciting, interactive workshop.
There are times in our lives when watching an event unfold where we know that we have to do something. Moving on to the next thing on our daily To Do list is just not enough.
In March of this year, I received a strong message that I needed to help the victims of the war in Ukraine. And it’s a confusing feeling, as what I can I do, other than donating money, from 6,000 miles away from the conflict?
Enter John P. Lynch, my friend (introduced by Stephen O’Connor) who is originally from the East Coast of the USA, and the Founder and Director of the Corporate Aid for Ukraine John created CAU to help the Ukrainians who were pouring into Poland to escape the conflict. He has lived near Krakow for a long time with his family and sent ideas on where I could go to volunteer in June.
The Multicultural Centre in Krakow (here is a sign-up sheet if you want to volunteer: https://ib-polska.pl ) was the organization that I chose, a group that established a clothes collection and distribution center in Krakow. On arrival to the group, I was given a Health and Safety briefing, an introduction to other volunteers for the shifts, and put to work in the warehouse.
Initially, I worked at the front door of the facility to greet the refugees who were coming to get donated clothing. My counterpart was a young Ukrainian woman who spoke Polish, English, and Ukrainian. We managed the headcount of the beneficiaries, made small talk and smiled, and kept the line moving in an orderly capacity.
Some people seemed fine, while others had a faraway look that reflected the grief they were enduring having walked away from their homes with just the clothes on their backs. One woman, with tears in her eyes, showed us a picture of her 19-year-old son who was still in Ukraine. Over 400 people went through the lines each day, mostly women and children, as men above 16 and younger than 60 were required to stay in Ukraine.
During the afternoons of my shifts with the volunteer team, we unpacked boxes of donated clothes into the various categories for women, men, and children by size, function, etc. This was a great opportunity to meet and speak with the other volunteers, many of them who had a direct connection with a Ukrainian family member or loved one. Their stories of how and why they arrived to help were beautiful and inspirational.
If you can, sign up to help these organizations who are combating the atrocity of this war. The perspective I gained is hard to put into written words or when sharing the stories with others. In my opinion, we are all one and have to help each other while standing up to those who would harm others. Until next time, peace to the victims of the war and the wonderful volunteers I met in Krakow.
We asked Chris Gefvert, Director of Marketing & e-commerce at Allied Wire & Cable a few questions about how Marketing and Sales work together in his organization. Take a read below.
Our goal in marketing is to make the sales team’s job as simple and easy as possible. Full stop. Informing potential customers about the company before they speak to sales, saves a rep from pitching. Providing content educates them so reps don’t have to answer basic questions. Engaging them enough to raise their hand and request products saves the reps a game of cold phone tag. From the very start of the customer journey, each touch within our marketing operation acts as a force multiplier to sales efficiency.
In the B2B space, the common answer when each is asked about the other is usually “Marketing JUST makes pretty pictures, and Sales are JUST order-takers.” We’ve struggled with the paradigm of this unequal workload and impact perception between sales and marketing, and honestly, the root cause of misalignment is as simple as poor understanding. It’s a fascinating paradox that the two departments of an organization most skilled in communication are the ones at fault here, yet it is almost universal across industries.
We foster the understanding that both marketing and sales play an integral part in the customer journey and they’re part of one larger revenue operations team. Close-ready leads don’t appear out of thin air without marketing and there’s never a single cent of revenue without the sales team. To hammer home this idea of being on the same team, we developed a “RevOps Machine” diagram as a visual storytelling device to help align the teams for each campaign – almost like a technical flowchart of all customer touch points throughout the funnel. Whenever a new idea, campaign, or process improvement is communicated to either team, our Rube-Goldberg-like model is used and tiny customers are processed through each step to show the impact of even the smallest facet can have weight in the overall journey.
It’s an ongoing evolution – a perpetual cycle. Our marketing message is crafted by just listening to salespeople, not just in meetings, but on calls and emails with their customers, even in interactions with other salespeople on the floor. On a given day, our sales team speaks to countless more customers than we do in marketing, so it only makes sense to develop our messaging… well, right from the horse’s mouth. We take common themes, notable trends, and industry lingo and then root them in our brand and promotional messages as solutions to the customers’ current PBOs. It’s not so much us reinforcing marketing messaging for our sales reps, but them reinforcing our marketing messaging.
I cannot stress it enough – constant communication and feedback. Ask a sales rep at random “how did our last campaign positively affect you and your customers?” If they don’t give a glowing review, was it successful?
Take a full week and do a “ride-along” with different members of the sales team. Customer service, sales reps, key account executives, sales managers, everyone. Each has unique sales functions, day-to-day issues, even customer types, etc. and they all have a better pulse on YOUR target marketing personas than any focus group or CAB. As a marketer, a single day in the bullpen yields a month’s worth of customer and product knowledge.