Only if you understand the business, people in the TOB market can stand up straight!

In many companies, firstly, the positioning of market, sales and marketing departments is rather confusing and easy to confuse; secondly, these positions are out of touch with the business and do not fully understand the customers and business. In this article, we will solve these two problems.

To be honest, I found that many companies have a very confusing positioning of the marketing department, sales department, and sales department, which is sometimes really confusing. Especially the small and medium-sized enterprises I have come into contact with, they can be roughly divided into two categories: traditional enterprises and Internet enterprises.

Let's talk about traditional enterprises first. These enterprises generally rely on traditional channels to enter the market, such as personal connections, local promotion, and participation in exhibitions and conferences. The industries in which these enterprises are located are usually mature, and the market structure is basically finalized. In terms of product functions, everyone is not much different, and customers basically choose from the list according to their needs. Customers know the suppliers very well, and they can clearly distinguish which are the industry leaders and which are the followers. For these enterprises, in addition to working hard on products, technologies and services, they pay more attention to the handling of offline business relationships.

Let’s take a look at Internet companies. These companies know how to keep up with the times and use new marketing channels to drive business growth.

Compared with the ground-based marketing methods of traditional enterprises, Internet marketing is much more efficient, which is related to the characteristics of their products.

There are two common extremes among companies that value online channels:

One type is that their products are disruptive and they have something that others do not have, so they use the Internet to quickly spread exposure and expand the market;

The other type is when the products are very mature and everyone’s products are similar, so it’s a competition of price/performance ratio.

The purpose of using online channels is to attract new customers who are new to the market, while also seeing if they can "pick up bargains" from competitors.

Today's companies, regardless of size, basically adopt a combination of online and offline models.

Therefore, the growth model of the enterprise determines the organizational structure and the functions of each department. As I said at the beginning, each department has a different position in different companies, and the responsibilities of department members are also different.

Sometimes, when you hear people outside calling themselves marketers, salespeople or salespeople, you really can’t figure out what specific area they are responsible for.

But the theme I want to express today is " marketers must understand the business ", so we must first clarify the positioning of marketers. What I mean by marketers is simply to help companies attract customers. Whether you promote through new media or offline exhibitions, your role is the upstream of the sales department, and you have to "transfuse blood" to the sales department.

When it comes to the relationship between departments, there are often frictions between the marketing department and the sales department when they work together. Usually, the marketing department is always the one that suffers because their work results are not as directly visible as the sales department. The sales department is the department that directly takes orders and sees money, so they are naturally more confident - because they can speak with actual results. However, the data provided by the marketing department is easily considered to be embellished by others.

What’s more, there are few people in the company who can truly understand your work content and the meaning behind the data, let alone evaluate your work results. The safest way for outsiders is to judge your efforts by the results.

Therefore, marketing people are sometimes lonely, especially when you are the only person in the marketing department. This phenomenon is actually quite common. Gradually, the marketing department becomes a marginal department, dispensable, and some miscellaneous tasks from other departments are thrown to them. They are busy all day long, but the output efficiency is very low.

Why is this happening?

The core problem is that marketers are too far away from customers.

Think about it, the people who make the most money in a company are definitely those closest to the customers, such as sales.

Of course, the operation of an enterprise is inseparable from the three links of traffic, conversion, and delivery . Different business nodes require different roles to participate. Therefore, it is impossible to let everyone run to the front end to contact customers. After all, who doesn’t want to make more money if they have the ability?

The characteristic of marketing personnel being too far away from customers is that they seem to know everything about the company, products, and industry, but in fact they only stay on the surface and do not truly understand the real needs of the market and customers.

As a marketing person, if you are too far away from the front line, your words will have no authority in the company, will not be recognized, and will not be persuasive. Because your work is centered around the business, but you only have general professional execution capabilities and lack the professional depth of real scenarios. As Ren Zhengfei said, it makes sense to let people who hear the gunfire make decisions, because this is more likely to be correct.

AI technology is developing rapidly now, and AI-generated articles, videos, pictures, and music can be indistinguishable from the real ones.

But AI can never completely replace humans, especially in scenarios that require creativity and a deep understanding of market realities.

AI is just an executor, and excellent execution is closely related to the leader's decision-making, in addition to the executor's own ability.

The most valuable thing for humans is the ability to see the real world and give real feedback on the real situation of the market and customers. If marketers do not use their creative advantages, they are really inferior to AI, and being replaced by AI is not an exaggeration.

Humans are very complex animals. Without real experience in the front line, it is really just a theory. People who lack front-line practical experience are particularly vulnerable because you are easily deceived.

In the eyes of customers, you may be a novice who does not have a deep understanding of the market. If you use wrong information as the basis for market decision-making, problems will naturally arise. You can only understand this after you have really come into close contact with the market.

You think AI is smart, but actually it is stupid.

If you tell it that you are rich, it will not question you. It will believe whatever you say. This is the state of being out of touch with the front line and the real market. Even if you have the ability, if you do not have the right judgment, you cannot maximize your value.

In the market, you need to both attack and defend.

Take channel expansion as an example. This is a double-edged sword. The connection between people is based on interests, but whether the other party's interest motivation will harm you requires practical experience and losses to judge. If the other party's goal is achieved, you will lose value. The lowest risk approach is to standardize and granularize the process of each link, increase the threshold and difficulty for the other party to obtain value, and screen out the real valuable partners.

But if you are not on the front line, you cannot feel this information, and you don’t know what the specific execution strategy should be. Frameworks are empty. This is why many bosses come from sales backgrounds, because they understand the business and customers best.

If a marketing staff does not understand the business, you will not be able to have greater power to manage the entire marketing chain. You will become a node in the process and will never have a chance to "stand out". You are a supporting role and listen to others' instructions because you cannot make constructive suggestions.

For example, new salespeople often think, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat.” But is this really the case?

Whether this approach is correct or not is closely related to the company's strategy.

Suppose you are given an opportunity to be in power and the goal is to achieve XXX market share growth next year, will you still allow sales to catch cats at will?

I believe not. You should avoid this problem from the source, and screen the potential industry segments to focus on next year based on the actual market situation, and then allocate more market resources in this direction. The corresponding customers will also be closer to your target customer group, and then be assigned to suitable sales for conversion.

If marketers are disconnected from the business, your sense of purpose will be unclear and your marketing materials will appear cluttered.

Of course, many marketing personnel also have their frustrations as the company’s structure limits their opportunities to get in touch with the front line.

If you have the way but not the skills, you can still seek the skills; if you have the skills but not the way, you will only be able to obtain the skills.

The skills of marketers are transferable, which means that they do similar things in different industries and companies, and there will be no problems if they use the same method.

But this is actually the biggest trap for marketers.

This phenomenon will not make them appreciate because they are just doing repetitive work without growing.

If you are interested in a certain industry, it is recommended that you go deep into it, starting with understanding the development context of the industry, the upstream and downstream of the industry, and the representative figures in the industry. This way you will have a deeper understanding of the company's positioning, the advantages of its products in the industry, and its differentiated positioning.

Look, Director Lei is so successful but he is still on the front line.

For TOB marketers, it’s time to delve deeper into the business.