Football season has finally come to a stirring close and while many marketers are weighing in on this year’s Superbowl ads, all that football reminded me of an analogy that I believe is no longer a good one. Sports analogies have been with us since man started competing, and we’ve used those analogies to express business concepts in ways that might make them more easily understood to people who aren’t familiar with a particular business. In that light, football used to be a good analogy for how sales and marketing worked together, especially in BtoB markets. 
See if this sounds familiar. Marketing is the quarterback. It calls the play (the marketing program) and passes the ball (a qualified prospect) to the wide receiver (sales) who carries the ball across the goal line (closes the deal). Roles are clear and expectations have been set.
The problem with this analogy is the prospect is a passive object that is acted upon. It implies that the sales and marketing team is actually in total control. But we know that in today’s world the opposite is true. When McKinsey released the Customer Decision Journey report in 2009, it codified what many marketers already knew: Customers don’t behave in a linear way purely in response to stimulus from marketers. Yet many marketers have not changed the way they plan to engage their potential and current customers. Content marketing, social media marketing, content syndication and user-generated ratings and reviews are increasingly critical components of the marketing mix. Yet these activities are understaffed and underfunded in many organizations.
I recently heard someone describe marketing in today’s world as a pinball game. While you can influence where the customer might go in her journey, you can’t control it or completely predict it. It seems a closer analogy than football to marketing reality, but this too has its limitations.
This post is an open call for nominations for the best sports, or non-sports, analogy that will describe sales and marketing in 2012. Feel free to add your suggestion in the comments section or contact me directly. A steak dinner awaits the best nomination!
John Ellett is CEO of nFusion Group, LLC, a digitally-focused marketing agency based in Austin, TX. He has a passion for encouraging and supporting marketing leaders who have the courage to be change agents in their organizations.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
In my recent experience, marketing has become more like a networking event. You need to show up well dressed, well groomed and confident (i.e. have a good product). But you also need to be prepared to approach new people, talk about yourself appropriately to different audiences and most importantly (and difficult for many marketers and networkers alike) be genuine. A genuine conversation will lead to many more business cards – or customers – in the end.
Anita, great analogy! The need for genuine conversation is so true and very difficult for many.
John — this doesn’t exactly answer your question but awhile back, I wrote “business is now an action sport” — a piece about how action sports like surfing, snowboarding, motocross were more appropriate models for business, for example, in action sports, progression happens through evolution, not domination — see: http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/2011/06/28/business-is-now-an-action-sport/ — would love to hear what you think, and what role marketing has in an action sports analogy. — denise lee yohn
Denise, I have to agree with the action sport idea. I believe I’ve crashed snowboarding on the “marketing half pipe” more than once!
A better metaphor is farming. Marketers are more akin to farmers, looking for fertile soil (market gaps), planting seeds (products to fill the gaps), tending the plants and giving them room to grow & pollinate (customer relationships), cultivating the strains (improving the products), and harvesting the yield (revenue).
Professor Mohanbir Sawhney, a tech marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management, has been advocating a change in the language used to describe marketing for years as the language we use shapes not only our views of the world but also how we are able to think and interact. He advocates agrarian metaphors. I agree.