Is your marketing team the “A-Team”?
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I was having a conversation recently with someone who was bemoaning the lack of success her sales team was having in getting market traction. She was concerned that her sales staff was the B Team and not the A-Team. I have also heard that qualifier applied in a number of venture backed companies when they were looking to replace their non-performing B-Team with an A-Team.

I’ve fallen into the trap myself: blaming a lack of sales success on the sales team rather than where I now think it belongs: marketing. I have often found that, in the right market, even a C-Team can be successful at sales, but in a lousy market having an A-Team won’t help at all.

That begs the question, how do you know if it is the market or the team? I keep sending people the same link to deal with this subject, so I’m posting it here in case there is actually anyone who is still reading my ramblings. Will Price wrote a blog entitled “Isolating Causality: Bad Market or Bad Companyâ€?.

In the blog he states that: “… companies that are in healthy markets close enough business to:

1. develop a clear value proposition
2. build repeatable marketing, sales, and delivery models around common uses cases
3. know their top 2-3 competitors cold and see them in every account
4. are solicited for business
5. have real, active partners engaged in common customer accounts
6. have highly energetic cultures where the changes month to month are signficant
7. can explain what they do so that almost anyone can understand
8. share a common mission that everyone in the company can articulate.�

To me, the best indicators of healthy markets are those that are external to a company. If clients are not calling you, if you don’t see the same competitors regularly and if you can’t find any partners then you are not in a healthy market.

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