Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin.

Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin.

Part of marketing's responsibility is to build brand awareness and engage potential and existing customers .A large part of the sales responsibility is to convert potential customers into paying customers.

Some organizations like to house both of these functions in the same group in the belief that this is more efficient.

My experience is that it's better to separate what used to be called "filling the funnel" or sales pipeline from the actual sales conversion process. The key is to make sure that both sales and marketing functions are "joined at the hip" and agree to basic definitions such as the characteristics of a qualified prospect.

Generally sales people are paid a commission so they are not interested in filling the sales pipeline and want to focus 100% of their attention on converting prospects into paying customers, so their income is dependent on having a constant supply of well qualified prospects.

Things can quickly disintegrate when the sales people have to reject many of the prospects delivered by marketing. This is where it's critical to have agreement on the DNA of a qualified prospect, so that the sales team doesn't put 100% of the blame on marketing when sales prospects cannot be converted into paying customers. What can happen in such circumstances is that the sales people shift their focus to prospecting (the marketing side of the coin), and dramatically reduce their efficiency and their income.

Bottom line: separating filling the pipeline from the sales conversion process has the benefit of introducing checks and balances, is also more efficient for most organizations and let's each team focus on what they are best at doing.