Description

Post-mortem from my 2nd Sales Development vs. Marketing debate. My thoughts, goal, strategy, my opening statement, counter arguments from the Sales Development side, my rebuttals that I didn’t have time to make, how I prepared, and how I felt.



Hosted by the CRO Collective and Sales IQ--Sales and Sales Development consultancies. Warren Zenna heads up CRO Collective. 5-6 Sales and Sales Development influencers to take the pro-Sales Development side, while I took the pro-Marketing side.

I had 6 minutes to make an opening statement summarizing the problem of Sales Development, the solution of Marketing, and how to sunset Sales Development and gradually repurpose Sales Development into Marketing: 

1. Clarified that Sales Development is spam and what those tactics are. Made it clear that Marketing is proper, non-spam marketing and what those tactics are. 
2. Clarified that Sales Development is a marketing activity to generate leads for Sales, not a sales activity. 
3. Framed the debate as Marketing vs. Sales Development (proper marketing vs. spam). 
4. Presented the history of Sales Development, Marketing, and buyer preferences. 
5. Explained the shift in modern marketing and buyer preferences. Why Marketing is able to generate a sufficient amount of quality leads for Sales with proper, non-spam marketing. Why and how Sales Development is failing  
6. Described how Marketing and Sales interact together because companies have a mixture. 
7. Showed how Sales Development harms both Sales and Marketing. 
8. Explained the full cost and harm of Sales Development, the full ROI picture. 
9. Stated my conclusion: Sales Development is unnecessary and does more harm than good relative to marketing. 
10. Shared the solution: compare Sales Development to Marketing and gradually repurpose Sales Development to Marketing through two experiments. 
11. Pointed out that this is what Sales Development wants and is anyways trying to do as soon as possible. That Sales Development would be the first to thank you. That anyone who alleges to have the best interests of Sales Development would do well to liberate them

At the end, the Sales Development camp started to realize that the real solution to the problem of Sales Development is: Marketing. They started to discuss how companies should generate leads with proper marketing tactics like content, social, community, and buyer-self service. I pointed out that what they were talking about was Marketing. That what they want is Marketing, not Sales Development. It was a shame that the panel ended at this point, because this was when they were just starting to realize their error and the solution. They can see that themselves, when they are buyers on the receiving end of vendors’ Sales Development vs. Marketing. They can also see that to the extent they do proper marketing to sell their Sales Development services and products–which they all do a lot of--and is what actually drives their profit and growth



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To learn more about the model and these topics, check out my book “The Death of the SDR: And the Birth of the Buyer Centric Revenue Model”. Available on Amazon in ebook, paperback, and audiobook