Six months ago, Quontic set out on a mission to bridge the divide between marketing and sales and propel the business forward. It’s a nice time to step back and reflect. Overall, we’ve focused on building a solid foundation, finding and closing gaps, and hiring the right people to help with our mission. So far, it’s been a rewarding experience.
One of the bigger gaps that we are working to close is between Marketing and Sales.
There is a line in the irreverent TV show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, that illustrates one of our bigger challenges. Mac, one of the degenerate characters, says, “Yeah, but who is it versus? Who are we doing it versus?” In the show, Mac and the crew can only think along one dimension: if we do something, it must be against someone. It must be versus.
In our experience, this mentality can be found in many large organizations between the Marketing and Sales teams. Each case is unique, given the circumstances of the team structure and the personalities involved. The kernel of the issue, however, is typically territory or ownership. As much as the workplace has evolved and is a safe, collaborative environment human nature can seep in and create tension. Who “owns” what? When things are not going well, where can we point? When things are going well, who gets the kudos?
The divide can be present even in smaller/nimbler companies like Quontic.
What we’ve found is that the gray space between Marketing and Sales is healthy. There’s a natural overlap, and a unified goal to drive revenue for the business. Driving revenue, however, is often opaque and multi-faceted. Plus, the effects are dramatized with the backdrop of digital, and all the tracking and attribution capabilities that come along with it. While the ability to measure almost anything is exciting, it’s imperfect and can drive the wedge further between Marketing and Sales. For example, Quontic had its best month ever in January in terms of Funded Mortgage Loans. Sales technically closed these loans and shepherded the application through. The leads, however, came from various sources, campaigns and tactics – some digital and some physical. Tracking from lead to conversion is one thing, but determining the credit that each tactic and touchpoint receives, across efforts from folks on the marketing and sales team, is a science. Exactness is often the goal. We have decided to aim for something different.
At Quontic, we’ve made good progress, which is fitting, given our Core Value “Progress, Not Perfection.”
How have we done it?
We’ve done so by focusing on the unified goal to hit our monthly revenue target for mortgage lending. Rather than getting lost in attribution, and who gets credit, we’ve rallied around our ambitious growth goals. It’s really the only way we can hit them.
We’ve done so by making our CRM a shared space. The objective is data hygiene, practicing healthy habits with regard to email, automation and deal flows. The handshake between Marketing and Sales is right there for everyone to see in our CRM platform.
We’ve done so by building the engine together. From the top of the funnel, with generating awareness, down to the bottom, with closing deals, there is an end-to-end system – an engine – one that Marketing and Sales built together.
The gap between Marketing and Sales, we’ve found, is helpful. It helps Marketing think and act with the customer in mind; to focus on delivering a best-in-class experience for various audiences at various stages of their mortgage journey. It helps Sales focus on…sales, without being bogged down on lead generation, a significant and complicated undertaking.
There is a distance for us to go. Both teams are energized by the challenge, and we’re doing our best to have a bit of fun along the way. Fun is a tall order at work, especially with big objectives. To help achieve this, we’ve adopted the approach of spreading credit openly and freely. As we chip away at our separate tracks of work, folks feel good.
In the end, the basic equation of Marketing + Sales is a winning one. It’s worth the effort to overcome the gray space and march toward the unified goal. The alternative can be seen across 13 seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the zero-sum approach makes for hilarious television, but should be left there.
The goal here at Quontic? There is no versus.
