How to Hurt Sales with Effective Marketing?

Sometimes marketing works like a silo — it generates leads but doesn’t focus on converting them into sales. In such a situation, sales suffer from “bad multitasking” and productivity declines. The consequences can go even further. Sometimes sales can sell faster than production is able to produce.

You need global synchronization to maximize company efficiency because nobody is a desert island. We are, rather, links in a chain. And the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

What is Bad Multitasking?

Bad multitasking happens when we are doing too many things at the same time. As a result, our efficiency is lower than it could otherwise be.

Just imagine yourself juggling orange balls. You begin with one ball. It’s easy, too easy. Juggling one ball can’t be even called juggling. Your effectiveness is too low. You can deal with one more ball.

Someone throws you another ball. Now we can call it juggling. It’s a little bit harder but your productivity increases. So you get another ball to juggle. You need to concentrate more but you manage to keep three balls in midair. Your productivity is high.

It’s simple to predict what will happen next. You’ll get the fourth ball. A person who is throwing the balls at you thinks: One ball is not enough. Two is good. Three is even better. So four balls will be great.

This line of thought I call “bus induction method”. The fallacy says that if 200 people got on the bus, one person more would always fit in. Unfortunately, life is brutal. With the fourth ball everything falls apart. Your productivity falls to zero.

The conclusion is obvious: too few balls is bad, and too many is also not good. We need a balance.

At this point you may object and say that you are a better juggler than others. That you can deal with four, five, six or even more balls. So, what does it prove?

Well, actually nothing special. The conclusion is always the same. One ball is rarely too much but even the best juggler in the world has his limits. When the number of balls is too big, the only solution is to reduce the number of balls in midair.

See the graph illustrating the relationship between productivity and the number open items.

Our effectiveness is greatest when the number of balls is optimal — not maximal. Somewhere between “too few” and “too many”, we can find “just right”.

So, we can divide multitasking into GOOD and BAD. Good multitasking is when adding balls boosts productivity. Bad multitasking is when the right decision is to reduce on the number of balls.

Effective Marketing vs. Causing Bad Multitasking in Sales

Marketing is like a person throwing the balls for Sales to juggle. Sometimes, sales complains about the number or/and quality of generated leads. Sales juggle one ball.

To keep with the times you implement a marketing automation system. The system does work. Your productivity level is higher: you throw sales two, three, four, five balls…. The more hot leads and offer inquiries, the better, right? Marketing has new software and is measured according to local targets. Consequenty, Marketing maximizes the number of leads generated. They ignore the fact that Sales are not able to process the leads. “That’s not our business that they can’t manage”, a marketer might say.

But at some point the productivity of Sales doesn’t increase with the amount of added leads. Sales are overwhelmed with an excessive number of leads and their productivity declines.

When salespeople are in bad multitasking, they are jumping from one client to another. They cannot finish a single proposal because a new potential client is calling.

Nothing good will come of it. The quality of proposals declines. The number of dissatisfied clients rises and, as a result, clients choose your competition. All marketing budget is wasted. Your your good name is tainted. You lose clients and end up frustrated.

For managers who have always experienced low sales, more lead generation is always the answer. But sometimes low sales results from processing too many leads at the same time. In such a scenario, we need to reduce number of active leads to boost sales. It doesn’t have to mean cutting on marketing activity in lead generation. But under some circumstances such a drastic move may be necessary. Spending money on irritating potential clients with long response time seems rather pointless.

If in bad multitasking, then a good solution is to put in place a limit on the amount of work in progress (WIP). It means freezing activities on some prospects and relentlesly closing the remaining active deals. New prospects are unfrozen as active deals are closed. A safe, practical and low-priced method of implementing this principle is the use of kanban.

Originally published at www.linkedin.com.

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