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Salespeople Communicate Market Feedback
Salespeople are responsible for voicing their customers’ ideas and concerns to other members of the
organization. After all, if marketing managers are going to create collateral to educate them, they need to
know what they need and want in the way of information. That knowledge comes from salespeople. How
the information is conveyed, though, varies from situation to situation and company to company.
Audio Clip
Interview with Ted Schulte
http://app.wistia.com/embed/medias/1f45a7f238
Ted Schulte describes the relationship between sales and marketing at Boston Scientific.
Accenture, the management consulting firm, engages in projects with clients that cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars, if not millions. After each sale is concluded, the account management team reviews
the process in excruciating detail, win or lose. Questions such as “Did we have the right information to
give to the client at the right time?” or “Were our offerings aligned with their needs?” are answered. After
the review, executives then decide whether the company needs to produce additional marketing material
to support the offering, create new offerings, or follow up on any other ideas generated by the review.
By contrast, KMBS salespeople sell copiers and printers that range from $5,000 to $150,000. A KMBS
sale generally isn’t as large as an Accenture sale, but KMBS has many more sales going on at any given
time than Accenture does. The sheer volume of sales at KBMS makes it harder for salespeople to get the
information related to those sales to the company’s decision makers. For that reason, KMBS uses CRM
software to track all its prospects and their key buying criteria. If the sale is lost, the reasons for it can be
entered into the software, as well as information about the competing product the buyer purchased.
Marketing personnel then use this information to improve KBMS’s sales efforts.
Figure 13.16