I have a good friend who is from New York, so he is not shy about expressing his opinion. He works in B-to-B sales, so he is in and out of businesses day after day. He sees a lot of management styles - some good, some not so good. He has a saying that he quotes any time he finds a business where a manager has chosen to look the other way when something is going wrong. Even though it is obvious to everyone that there is a problem, it would be uncomfortable to make it right. So the manager just lets it go on. Here is what my friend says in those situations: What you permit, you promote.

Now let me relate that bit of advice to managing your marketing efforts. Many times someone in your company who is in charge of marketing knows there is a disconnect between what is happening with the customer on the marketing end of things, and what is happening in sales. They almost operate independently of each other. Along the same vein, there can be a similar disconnect between customer service, sales, and marketing, where customer complaints never get fixed on the front end of your sales process. Let’s face the facts: a discontented customer is a marketing and sales problem every bit as much as it is a customer service problem. There are just too many choices for people today to think you could retain a discontented customer if you don’t fix their problem. And customer retention is a marketing and sales issue. What you permit, you promote, especially if that customer is upset enough to take to social media to start complaining.

In today’s business environment, marketing touches everything that touches the customer. Marketing has to take the lead whenever there is any contact with a customer. Segmenting the customer relationship into several different business departments is a thing of the past. Why? Because customers expect your business to be fluid. If they have a problem, they expect one point of contact to solve all of their issues. There is nothing more frustrating than being passed from one person to another trying to solve a rather simple problem from the customer’s perspective. Marketing has to take the lead because the customer relationship is key to everything we do in marketing. Think about it, when we promote a brand, what are we really doing? We are trying to shape the way a customer feels about the brand. When we are writing a blog, we are trying to engage the customer in something that interests them. When we produce an ad, we are trying to appeal to the customer’s senses to entice them to buy from us. When the customer makes a first purchase, we do a customer satisfaction survey to make sure they have good feelings about us. What is the common denominator here? The customer is reached in each and every marketing effort.

If you are experiencing a disconnect between marketing, sales, and customer service, I would suggest you do two things. First, rewrite the way you go about promoting your business brand with the customer to be based on their needs and desires. Being customer-centric is key to effective marketing. Second, form a plan that works in a circular motion rather than a straight line from marketing to sales to customer service. Whenever marketing, sales, and customer service operate independently of each other, I can guarantee you have customers falling through the cracks in your system. Whenever you can, sales and customer service need to coordinate solutions to customer problems. And marketing needs to be there to shift your marketing message based on actual feedback from customers. I find that those in sales know what is working in marketing. Depend upon this feedback. I also find that those in customer service know the problems in the system. Marketing is needed to emphasize what is working and to use the solutions to customer service problems to help retain your customers for further purchases.

Marketing is changing. It touches much more than it used to. If you are in charge of marketing, make sure you are taking a holistic approach to marketing through both sales and customer service activities.