Beached Sales
/Pulling marketing and PR can leave salespeople pinned down.
by Fred Pfaff
In every time of doing more with less, it’s tempting to cut back on marketing and PR, thinking that more sellers in the field is the most efficient way to advance the business. Nothing happens without sales, goes the argument, so more feet on the street will identify and seize more opportunities. We’ll add the other fun stuff when we’re flush again, but for now we need to buckle down and pound the pavement.
There’s a hole in that plan. Salespeople are not efficient marketing vehicles. In fact, the tighter budgets get, the more inefficient they are. The reasons have nothing to do with the role or importance of salespeople; they have everything to do with the nature of sales in the media business.