What To Do With Absent Marketing

Astute salespeople have learned how and when to move on from Absent Marketing. From Absent Executives, too…

Hey look! There’s a CMO. Let’s ask a question.

Interviewer: “What do you think of Michael Jordan?”

CMO: “Fantastic basketball player. Maybe the best of all time.”

(If you’re speaking to a CMO from Chicago who followed the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, Michael Jordan will be considered the best player of all time. But if the CMO is from Cleveland, Boston, LA or the Bay Area, CA and followed the NBA at any point in time maybe — maybe not…)

Nevertheless…

I: “Would you like to be like Mike?”

CMO: “Oh, yeah…”

—

Being from Chicago, I can tell you that Michael Jordan had a reputation for being the first person to practice, and the last one to leave. Even though he was Michael Jordan. Or maybe because he was Michael Jordan.

There’s a marketing lesson to be learned in that. An executive, sales, sales enablement and a marketing lesson to be learned.

Because it seems marketing nowadays isn’t anywhere near the corporate practice facility.

You may find marketing at the local coffee shop on the phone or playing games in the office break room.

You may find marketing at those once or twice a year company kickoffs where marketing gets 30 minutes on Wednesday. But those don’t suffice either.

Michael didn’t practice only once or twice a year.

What I mean by this is marketing is meant to take a leadership role in the business. To take a leadership role in growing the business. And that means working with sales…inside sales and external business developers who are playing the game.

Everyday. Competing.

Like Marketing is supposed to be.

Your external sales people are out there, everyday, grinding it out against the competition.

Your internal sales people are on the phones, everyday, grinding it out against the competition.

They’re taking the field.

Or, they’re taking the court. They’re on the floor.

More often than not, marketing isn’t even in the building.

But I see lots and lots of marketing pictures of people standing around at trade shows, outside scenic office buildings, and in comfy office lounges with open laptops wearing headphones.

Some would say that’s the way it is in corporate life today.

I call it marketing absenteeism.

Show me one picture of marketing working with sales on their pitch.

Show me one picture of marketing working with inside sales on their vocal delivery on the phone. Or online. Or anywhere…

Show me one picture of marketing working with product management on presenting the software demo.

Then show me one more picture of marketing working anybody on delivering messages… without the aid of any kind of technology.

—

Back to that interview…

I: What are you doing to enable your sales people to be top performers, in front of clients and prospects?

CMO: We have this really cool software that feeds customized content…

I: Anything else?

CMO: We have this really cool technology that tells me where our sales people are during the day…

I: And?

CMO: We have a team meeting once a year at our annual sales kickoff…

I: What about the other 51.5 weeks out of the year?

CMO: We send a few of our salespeople to a presentation training course…

I: Oh, you mean the one where they’re in group settings for two-days to practice public speaking and get about five minutes of actual presentation practice in front of a live group?

CMO: Yeah, that one! It’s great.

I: How many times do your sales people do that?

CMO: Once.

I: A year?

CMO: No, just once.

I: Do they practice being on the phone?

CMO: No.

I: Do they practice being on camera?

CMO: Maybe… but why would a sales person need to practice being on camera?

I: Ever use the camera on your laptop, phone or tablet for a meeting?

CMO: Yes.

I: Then why wouldn’t a sales person need to practice being on camera?

… or a webinar?

…or a conference call?

CMO: Dunno.

I: Anything else?

CMO: Yeah, we have a team of internal graphic designers to ensure that all slides that our sales people use look good. We have another team to make sure the graphics on our demos and videos look good, too.

I: Teams?

CMO: Oh, yeah. It’s very important that our graphics have brand consistency and look the part.

I: What about your marketing and sales people? Shouldn’t they have a team to work with them on personal presentation performance?

CMO: Why?

—

It continually amazes me how marketing priorities have become upside down.

Disconnected from sales.

Absent.

And it continually amazes me how sales puts up with it.

Or at least some in sales. I know many who have either given up on working in partnership with marketing on things such as their personal communication performance.

It’s also amusing how everybody from investors, to executive, to HR, to so-called training personnel have becoming accepting of the practice of disconnect with sales.

Absenteeism.

Marketing today has become an endless sea of noses in phones, tablets and computers too worried about digital marketing — and grossly negligent about sales performance.

Genuine sales performance and genuine sales enablement.

No amount of dumped content over mobile devices will substitute for personal performance.

—

I had perfect attendance in high school.

All four years of high school.

There were about seven of us who had perfect attendance of four years out of a graduating class of well over 600.

I vividly recall one snow day in Chicago when everybody else had the day off.

All other schools, businesses… you name it… they had the day off.

My high school was one that didn’t have the day off.

So I didn’t have the day off.

For all of the talk about sales never having a day off, I maintain that marketing shouldn’t either.

In the spirit of business, competition, etc.

But calm down, I want you to have the vacation and off days you so richly deserve.

True hustlers and grinders know what I mean.

—

So what should you do with absent marketing?

Find those who will out work, out hustle and show up on that snow day.

Find those who will show up at 6:00 am, everyday, as needed, to make sure sales is at the top of their game.

Find those who know that staying late, everyday, as needed, to ensure sales wins the business is Standard Operating Procedure.

And find those executives and yes, sales people who will put in the work like Mike.

Even those C-Suite dwellers who believe that they’re personal communication is tight need work.

Practice.

Continual, grind it out everyday practice.

Because you won’t find me playing games in the office lounge every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 3:00.

And I don’t think you’d find Mike in there, either.

Tony Compton holds two degrees from Loyola University Chicago: a 1987 B.A. in Communication and a 1995 MBA. He has held a number of marketing and business leadership positions over the past three decades.