Are You Selling Aspirin or Vitamins?

Paula Stout recently offered an interesting analogy in a Business Week article that illustrates the divide that often exists between sales and marketing at many companies. She said sales often uses the aspirin approach: sell to the pain points a customer might have. On the other hand, marketing often uses the vitamin approach: they assume clients want to grow so they offer longer-term solutions that will fortify future performance. It’s an illustrative comparison. The problem, of course, is that unless sales and marketing are on the same page, there is a good chance that your customers or prospective customers will be confused about your brand.

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Supercharging Revenues: Integrate Sales, Marketing and IT

Several representatives from our company have attended three big conferences this year: The Forrester Marketing Forum, the Forrester IT Forum and most recently, Dreamforce in San Francisco. The takeaway from the first two conferences was clear: if you want to be a player in tomorrow’s business world you better find a way to integrate marketing and IT. The takeaway from the Dreamforce conference was equally clear: if you want to be a player in tomorrow’s business world you better find a way to integrate sales and marketing.

So just imagine how powerful your revenue machine would be if you could integrate all three functions: sales, marketing and IT. This would have significance for both the B2C and B2B worlds, but it could literally supercharge the new business process for many B2B companies.

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