Marketing, sales and business development: who does what in a firm of ten

Marketing makes the right people aware of you and brings enquiries. Sales turns an enquiry into an order. Business development opens something you do not have today: a new city, a dealer, a partner, a different kind of customer. In a firm of ten, one person usually wears two of these hats, so the definitions matter less than a sheet with your own numbers on it. This post gives you that sheet to fill in, then shows one filled in.

The sheet

Copy it onto one page. Leave a blank as "unknown" rather than guessing, because an unknown is itself a finding.

MARKETING     owner: ________   not their job: ________
  Enquiries last month that named a product and quantity: ____
  Where most came from: ____________

SALES         owner: ________   not their job: ________
  Quotes sent: ____     Orders from those quotes: ____
  Enquiries still unanswered after two working days: ____

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT   owner: ________   ends on: ________
  The one new thing it is opening: ____________
  Time spent on it each week: ____ hours

THE HANDOVER
  A lead is: ______________________________________
  Sales tells marketing what happened to it by: ________

Three rules for filling it in. Each job has one name, even if the same name appears twice. Each name has a "not their job" line, because that is where arguments start. And the business development line has an end date, since it is a project, not a department.

Filling it in for a granite firm in Ongole

Take an invented firm of ten in Ongole that cuts and polishes granite slabs and sells to builders, interior contractors and a few dealers in neighbouring districts. Four people work the shop floor, one is in stores, one in accounts, two are on the phones and visits, a young relative who "does everything online", and the owner. Here is the owner's sheet after an evening with a pen.

Marketing owner: the relative. Not their job: replying to price enquiries. Enquiries naming a product and quantity: unknown, which meant nobody had ever counted. Most come from the website form and a trade directory.

Sales owner: the senior salesperson. Not their job: running the directory listing. Quotes sent: about forty, from memory. Orders: nobody had counted. Unanswered after two working days: the sheet itself showed seven, found by scrolling the form inbox.

Business development owner: the owner, ending when two dealers in a nearby district have signed, after which the senior salesperson takes over.

Lead defined as: a named person with a phone number who has asked for a price on a slab we cut, in a district we deliver to.

The sheet exposed the real fault. The seven buried enquiries took the senior salesperson most of a week to clear, and by then two of the buyers had ordered elsewhere. The relative had been told "marketing and sales", so enquiries from the form reached nobody in particular and sat. Naming one person responsible for replies, separate from the one who ran the listing, cost no hire.

What changed after the sheet

Three things followed, and none needed money. The relative kept the listing and the website and stopped replying to prices. The senior salesperson owned the reply to every form enquiry and added a won, lost or open column. The owner wrote the end date for the dealer project at the top of the owner's page and told the salesperson what would pass across. Nobody was promoted and nobody was blamed. The firm simply knew, for the first time, whose number was whose.

Blank by blank: what each answer tells you

If the enquiries line is "unknown", you have no marketing number, and marketing cannot be judged. Start recording each enquiry in a single sheet before you change anything else.

If quotes are high and orders are few, the problem is in sales: follow-up, price, or the kind of enquiry arriving. Look at it before widening the funnel. Why sales teams fail to follow up with leads lists the usual causes.

If both are healthy and the order book still looks thin, that is when a business development line earns its place.

If the same name sits against all three jobs, that is acceptable for a time. What is not acceptable is a name against a job and no number beside it.

The handover sentence

The lead definition is worth the most thought. Marketing says "we sent you leads" and sales says "they were rubbish", and both can be right if nobody wrote down what a lead is. Make yours specific to what you sell: who, how reachable, asking for what, and in which area. Then add two lines beneath it. Who may send a lead across, and where it is recorded. What sales writes back once the outcome is known: won, lost or open, and why. Marketing then learns which product pages brought buyers who ordered, and stops paying for those that brought quotes for slabs the firm does not cut.

If disputes over the handover return, sales and marketing alignment and a written marketing to sales agreement are the services nearest to that problem.

When the sheet is too much

With three or four people, a three-job sheet is theatre. The owner still sells. Use one enquiry sheet with a "won, lost, open and why" column, and read it yourself. Also do not hire a business development manager to fix a sales problem. If enquiries are already slipping, a person sent to find more of them adds to the pile you are losing.

Three questions for your next meeting

Who is responsible if enquiries fall? Who is responsible if enquiries hold but orders fall? Who is responsible for finding something we do not sell today? Three different names mean the jobs are separate. The same name, or silence, shows you what to fix first.

Print the sheet tonight, fill in the unknowns by phone tomorrow, and bring it to that meeting. Our FAQ answers what owners ask before they involve an outside firm, and if you want help drawing the lines in your own firm, tell us what you need.