Business
Hi, everyone. Just want to mention that I recorded this episode before the Coronavirus pandemic. I know that it’s going to be a stressful time for all of us. I do hope that you’ll find time to relax and get a sense of normality from listening to my episodes. Be safe and stay healthy, my friends. Hello everyone! Today is Sunday. Sunday is both lazy and busy afternoon. It’s a lazy morning and buzy afternoon kinda day. Sunday is the only day that I allow myself to sleep late and wake up whenever I want to wake up. It means that I don’t usually get up until like 10 am, so a very lazy morning of doing nothing. I love it! Then, I start working again on Sunday afternoon, like writing podcast or video scripts or recording podcast and video. Blah, blah blah! I was interviewing a marketing director of my clients a few days ago to help them build a collaboration process between B2B Marketing Group and Sales Enablement Team. During the interview, the Marketing Director made it very clear to me that B2B marketing should reside with the Corporate Marketing Team and should be part of the marketing function. You know what? I understand where she is coming from. Earlier this year, there was a talk that B2B marketing should be part of the sales team given that they are supporting business accounts and corporate sales. Plus, most of the marketing dollars such as media dollar and demand gen campaign budget supporting B2B marketing is coming from sales; therefore, the sales team feels that they should also own the team. Well, I can see both sides. Marketing wants to have the B2B Marketing Team as a part of their teams and the Sales Team feel that all the B2B Marketing dollars are coming from them so B2B Marketing should be part of corporate sales. Organizations often struggle which part of group should belong where. Sales enablement is a great example. I was doing my research for my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement. I have heated discussion with several sales enablement managers where this group should reside. Some are adamant that this should be part of sales. Several feel that sales enablement has a function of demand gen, therefore, they should be part of marketing. In many tech companies, believe it or not, sales enablement is part of product team or business units, because subject matter experts are within these teams and many sales-centric content is created by the subject matter experts and also the content creators. Heck, one company, recently, marked the sales enablement team as part of HR, since the core of sales enablement they did is all about on-boarding and training. This team did a great job, they were allocated to HR to help other teams to do better jobs on employee training. Granted there is no right or wrong answer. Here is my stand on this. Where the B2B Marketing or Sales Enablement resides depends on the purpose of the team and the maturity of the company. If the company is a start-up and growing fast, everyone is nimble, it probably doesn’t matter where the team reside. The core is communication, everybody talks to each other all the time and things get done. If the company is growing, chances you are going through growing pains at different stages, your company will go through different re-orgs to test out where the group should reside. If the sales team is growing rapidly, it may make sense for sale and marketing all stay under sales during that stage. If the company reaches a plateau or mature stage, the sales team has a bigger sales force, the marketing team is growing, as well, it may make sense to break down to have B2B marketing as part of the marketing, and sales enablement as part of sales operations, sales training or on its own. It really depends on what you want sales enablement to do. B2B Marketing from my perspective should stay in corporate marketing and that has its benefits. The biggest benefit is that you can leverage the corporate marketing’s resource and use other marketing resources whenever necessary. Where does your B2B Marketing and Sales Enablement reside? Share that with me. If you enjoy my podcast and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform or visit my website at PamDidner.com/podcast. Again, if you prefer watching video, simply type Pam Didner on YouTube and subscribe. One new video every week. Be well. Let’s connect again next week.