Every sales, marketing and product team needs a SCOTSMAN!
No, not that kind…..
Of course, I’m talking about the SCOTSMAN principles:
Solution, Competition, Originality, Timescale, Size, Money, Authority and Need
Historically, these principles have been mostly used by Sales teams when qualifying prospects, but is this why there is often such a disparity (and friction) between Sales, Marketing and Product? Do we feel the same pain or do we think revenue, demand and features are just someone else’s responsibility?
Perhaps we should try to see the world differently from the confines of day to day team-based activities. Unfortunately this is sometimes communicated very clumsily with phrases like “if you don’t work in sales, you work for sales”, which is often the last straw in a battle between salesperson and an uncooperative supporting team member. However, I prefer to think that we all work towards the sale — some before, some during and some after, with the customer central to our success.
Putting aside the “we’re here to do good” ethos that many businesses honestly (and occasionally insincerely) claim, they exist to make sales and then keep those customers for as long as they can.
It’s a bit like that overused story of the janitor in NASA who “was putting people on the moon”. NASA’s goal was to complete a moon mission and explore space. The business exists to generate revenue and profit, so everyone employed is on that mission, whether they realise it or not.
Therefore, it shouldn’t be such a surprise to keep sales in mind wherever in the company you work. Sales, Marketing and Product only achieve amazing things when they do them together.
I’ve always thought this and communicated the principles to my teams across Sales, Marketing and Product wherever I’ve led them, but I never really tried to combine them in a consolidated matrix until now.
It was also an experiment to see if SCOTSMAN really does fit across all those teams and i think it does below:
The multi-department SCOTSMAN
This matrix becomes a charter, of a kind. An agreement of the roles each team plays in supporting each other and the business in completing the ongoing mission of revenue and profit generation.
Sure, there will be discussions (and occasionally arguments) about what you actually put into each of those boxes, such as the tasks, plans, ideas and people involved. However, if those principles are agreed, at least your teams will know what part they play and feel like what they do is integral to the success of your mission.
Just as importantly, you’ll have a sales and customer-focused business which makes it immeasurably easier to achieve better results.
Tim Meredith
Hi! I'm Tim Meredith, CEO at Fractional Teams. I write about the latest industry insights and give advice on Unified Comms development and growth.
