In the last episode, we defined the sales and marketing teams as a Venn diagram, with the size of the overlap directly influencing the margins on work sold. The complaint of many sales team members is that the marketing team doesn’t bring them leads. The response of many marketing teams is that their job is to promote products, services, and the brand, not to drive sales leads. But the reality of any size printing company is that the sales teams rely on the marketing team to do both: promote the products and services and drive sales leads. So, how do you develop a marketing plan that meets the needs of both groups?

Start with that handy Venn diagram and begin with an evaluation of current marketing activities.

What we often discover in the evaluation process is that the marketing plans skew toward brand and product promotion, which lifts the company visibility but may not move the needle on acquiring new work. Designing programs to capture leads, follow-up on inquiries, and solicit new work usually take more time to design and execute, but they are essential to supporting the sales teams.