Culture Crash The collision between sales and marketing can be jarring. Here’s how to avoid whiplash.

Admit it: You hate your sales department.

They’re all loud egomaniacs whose idea of great collateral is a brochure peppered with bullet points and the word new. They don’t care about the value of the brand; they just want to move boxes or close sales, long-term consequences be damned. And you know what? They don’t like you, either. To sales, the marketing organization couldn’t possibly know less about the business and how it operates. And marketing never has to worry about actually making numbers.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Like oil and water, the Red Sox and the Yankees, or The Simpsons’ Itchy and Scratchy, sales and marketing seem destined to be at each other’s throats. "Sales is action-oriented—do first, ask questions later," says Brian Cohen, senior vice president and CMO of Farmers Group, a provider of insurance management services. "Marketers are much more cognitive in how they approach the issues."

By Constantine von Hoffman

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