Wanna.Be.Rick.Spielman

Account Executive

Valued Contributor

Salesperson butting heads with Marketing. (shocker)

Well team, it finally happened to me. I am now at a cordial disagreement with Marketing. I need to start by saying I genuinely love and appreciate our Marketing team and have never really had a disagreement with them up until this point.

I am creating a Salesflow sequence for the BDR team we are building to execute on. Only thing is, I have to send all email/voicemail templates to Marketing to make sure they sign off on the messaging. My gosh these people do not get sales. First off, short is sweet. You cannot send paragraphs in cold emails and expect anyone to read them, let alone respond. Secondly, I keep getting told I might be coming off "too aggressive" by having the team reach out everyday or every other day, depending on the client (ever heard of polite persistence?). Third, they want me to include attachments to the emails so clients can reference them. Common sense says no one opens an attachment from a total stranger reaching out to sell you something.

While I am far from your "pushy sales guy" and am a total team player, at what point do I say "I hear your point, but we are going to do it this way because ___" ??? I want to continue to be seen as someone that fits the culture of collaboration, but I also think I need to use my skills/talents to the best of my ability. Any advice would be appreciated.

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16 comments

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Lumbergh

Politicker

3

Sr Account Exec

Why is marketing approving SDR outreach? Do you report into marketing at the company? If not, I'd talk to sales leadership if Marketing continues to tell you how to do your job and let them know

Salespreuner

Big Shot

0

Regional Sales Director

+1 for this

MrMotivation

Politicker

3

Sales

Just upvote the comment then. 90% of your comments add nothing to the conversation and you are just commenting for commission.

Salespreuner

Big Shot

0

Regional Sales Director

I've upvoted already, sir - if it ain't visible to you, my bad!

And cheers to your wisdom and mention that my comments add nothing - a day when option comes to check activity of each person, we could discuss
I hope this comment of yours adds immense value!

Salespreuner

Big Shot

0

Regional Sales Director

And next time round, please check before you generalise on such a statement. Cheers!

JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

2

AM

I can relate here! Marketing's method of cold outreach in my experience has always been "too salesy." We ended up getting up SalesLoft for the sales team and not letting Marketing in so they had no access to our cadences or messaging and we just took their webinars/case studies/spec sheets as needed. Working together with marketing to create the best cadence may be impossible.

JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

1

AM

It may be helpful to bring someone from your CRM or Sales Engagment platform to help marketing understand that your ideas are more in alignment with industry and platform best practices in terms of outreach.

Wanna.Be.Rick.Spielman

Valued Contributor

1

Account Executive

I like that, I appreciate the advice! It is ironic that all marketing emails are the ones that are "too salesy" lol. It's like they are making a commercial each time

JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

0

AM

You're spot on there! People want to buy from real people - not actors!

RedLightning

Politicker

2

Mid-Market AE

For the attachment thing, attachments will flag your emails as spam or get blocked depending on the fire wall. You can probably find info on this, but unasked for attachments from a stranger (assuming this is outbound) will hurt performance.

Generally speaking, a good way to work with marketing is to have a conversation about scope. They should absolutely make sure the messaging is "on brand", but you need to help them understand the difference between sales and marketing communications. Same overall message, but at wildly different scopes.

Their job is to get on stage and be really interesting so people walk up to talk to them - so marketing comms are mostly going to be about how great the company/ product. It's also going to be extremely broad messaging to work for the largest potential audience.

Conversely, sales is a much narrower scope with 1 to 1 communication. Meaning it's got to be more personalized and the sales person has to be more interested than interesting earlier in the conversation. A great analogy for this to help them understand would be this - imagine you're at a networking event and a stranger walks up to you and unprompted starts speaking about how awesome they are for 3-5 minutes uninterrupted. You are very unlikely to have a good conversation or want to start one with that person. That's how marketing messaging comes across when done at the 1-1 level. The sales conversation in that analogy would be asking questions about the other person.

They mean well, but are operating with what works at scale in various campaigns they run. Hopefully that helps!

softwaresails

Politicker

1

Sales Manager

Lol nothing like butting heads with marketing!

I don’t know why marketing would be approving your outreach.

Blackwargreymon

Politicker

1

MDR

I can relate here! Marketing's method of cold outreach in my experience has always been "too salesy."

Clashingsoulsspell

Politicker

1

ISR

I can relate here! Marketing's method of cold outreach in my experience has always been "too salesy."

MR.StretchISR

Politicker

0

ISR

Why is marketing approving SDR outreach? Do you report into marketing at the company? If not, I'd talk to sales leadership if Marketing continues to tell you how to do your job and let them know

Mr.Floaty

Politicker

0

BDR

Entry/mid level jobs like reception and administrative support, payroll, accounting (except during tax time.) Jobs where there's a right and wrong way to do things fall in this category, jobs where there's a lot of grey area/problem solving/etc tend to be the ones where we take work home with us.

Cyberjarre

Politicker

0

BDR

Entry/mid level jobs like reception and administrative support, payroll, accounting (except during tax time.) Jobs where there's a right and wrong way to do things fall in this category, jobs where there's a lot of grey area/problem solving/etc tend to be the ones where we take work home with us.

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