How to help Sales and Creative mate (without making an ugly baby)
The Creative Director's Perspective
Jon Anderson, Creative Director
In the early days of my career, I stuck to my silo. Creative was my only domain, and the Sales team was a distant afterthought – as distant as the far side of Pluto. After all, I was an Art Director fresh out of design school, and I was completely focused on conjuring up brilliant concepts, winning awards, and getting a job.
As the years wore on, I heard from Strategists and CMOs about their business strategy and realized there was a huge gap between Sales and Marketing. Creative would often present to a room full of executives, and Sales would consistently struggle with creative direction.
It felt as if Sales and Marketing were on different planets.
This is a struggle as old as advertising itself – one that challenges even the best of companies. It trickles all the way down to the creative process. By the time the Creative team presents their work, the Sales team typically has little connection to it. On the other extreme, when Sales has too much influence in the creative process, the result is typically an over-the-top, hard-sell message featuring concepts that would be best served on a toilet paper roll.
The good news is that there's a fairly straightforward way to include the Sales team in the creative process while ensuring the creative product will be sophisticated and savvy. Just follow these steps.
#1 Identify Sales’ pain points
Hold a meeting to find out what Sales’ biggest challenges are and how Marketing might be able to help address them. Now, there won’t necessarily be a Marketing solution to every Sales challenge, but just listening and brainstorming can be amazingly helpful. For example, if Sales is receiving too many unqualified leads, perhaps Marketing can build a better pre-qualification tool into the company’s landing pages.
#2 Get the Creative team involved
The Creative team should spend some time brainstorming and present some ideas on how to address Sales' issues. The results can be surprising: a microsite that has a fun ROI calculator, a Facebook campaign that promotes a new Sales initiative, or a mailer to hot C-level prospects.
#3 Include Sales’ solvable issues in the Creative Brief
This is huge. Assuming there’s a good creative brief for all projects (there should be!), be sure to include Sales’ pain points. Make sure the Sales team signs off on the brief. This will not only give the Creative team insight into Sales’ issues, but will also influence the final creative product.
#4 Refer to Sales’ pain points during the creative presentation
When the Creative team presents their work, be sure to explain how it addresses Sales’ specific issues outlined in the brief, and how it might provide more qualified leads. Now, instead of Sales feeling like a third wheel, they’ll realize they have a stake in the game.
No matter what you do, Marketing and Creative won't solve all of Sales’ problems. But you can make an enormous difference by listening and being inclusive. And once you have a couple of successful campaigns under your belt, you may find that your whole relationship with Sales has changed – for the better.
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Jon Anderson, Creative Director For 14+ years Jon has worked on a wide range of projects in B2B and B2C markets on both the agency side and within corporate marketing organizations. Throughout his career he has helped clients of all shapes and sizes make significant strides in growing their businesses including: VMware, Wells Fargo, PeopleSoft, Autodesk, IBM, Yahoo, Apple, Nivea, Hansens and Comcast. Email Jon. |
