What does a marketing director do?

January 8, 2008 12:00 PM

My firm is trying to decide whether to hire a marketing/sales director. I have been tasked with gathering information about marketing and sales in general and presenting that information to the team, so that we can make a decision. So, what are the key responsibilities and duties of a marketing/sales director? What will such a person bring to our team? What's a good way to go about finding the right person for the position? What qualities should we look for in the hiring process? I am particularly interested in service marketing, for small consulting firms.

My firm has about 100 employees, with several branch offices. We provide environmental consulting services to government agencies and private industry. Currently, our technical project managers develop clients and close sales, and most people within the firm think of these activities as being all that marketing and sales encompass. Many people are wary of hiring non-technical people in marketing and sales, because they are afraid of the stereotypical phony used car salesman types. Bonus points for helping me figure out ways to move past these fears and stereotypes.

posted by faustessa to work & money (9 comments total)

sounds like your company needs a marketing director, not a marketing/sales director. the marketing director would create and manage a marketing program that usually would consist of advertising in multiple forms, along with other ways of increasing the presence of your company. the marketing director wouldn't be selling, just getting your name out there and directing perspective clients to the correct department/person for any sales that needed to be done via your current model. they would probably also evaluate how new business comes in, and make plans to increase that, as well.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 12:51 PM on January 8

Ultimately, any marketing or sales person should be generating additional business. Marketing generally is focused more on generating business opportunities by promoting awareness of the firm, which can tie back into marketing and promotion. Sales is generally tasked with taking the opportunities that result from the marketing efforts and producing revenue from them.

There is all kinds of room for overlap, particularly in a smaller company where one person might be doing marketing, sales, public relations, and promotion.

The first question I would have is does your firm need sales and marketing help? Obviously, somebody is creating sales now, otherwise you wouldn't have a job! How is it being done? Why does somebody think a change is needed? Are you trying to grow business in a particular sector? Govt and commercial sales are two very different skill sets.

I think you need to step back, work internally to figure out exactly what problem you are trying to solve, and them go hire somebody that you think can solve that problem. Don't get hung up on sales versus marketing versus business development, etc.

If you can't describe the problem, you have no hope of hiring the right person to solve it.
posted by COD at 1:00 PM on January 8

I would suggest that you first identify what it is you want this person to do. What are you trying to fix or grow within the company? Do you need to increase sales? Is there a specific type of client you are looking to work with?

Once you've outlined what you are trying to accomplish, you can figure out who to hire. It just seems odd to me that your company wants a "marketing director" but hasn't outlined what they would want this person to do or even know what a marketing director does.
posted by anthropoid at 1:01 PM on January 8

You might want to talk to a few agencies that specialize in this type of work. Even if you end up hiring someone to handle it internally, they can help give you a better idea of what you want to look for.
posted by scottreynen at 1:10 PM on January 8

The most important thing a Marketing Director is supposed to do is keep in touch with what your customers want out of your service, and help you figure out if you're really providing that or if you're close, or completely off. Understanding the market is job 1. Sales is just selling whatever you've got. You will get some customer feedback from Sales, but often salesfolks are too focused on making numbers to be truly thoughtful about what the company does and if anyone wants that. Or if it needs to shift a bit. Or just rename something.
posted by scarabic at 1:30 PM on January 8

Your company sounds a lot like mine, albeit in a different industry. I am a Marketing Director, if that tells you anything about the need for such a position in a similar company. FWIW, I am anything but a phony used-car salesman type. At least I like to think so.

Part of my job is to raise awareness for the company, which includes generating leads for the sales team. Once the leads go to the sales team, I do very little, aside from providing them with materials and other things to make their jobs more effective. Basically, I hardly ever interface directly with clients or potential clients in terms of selling or account maintenance.

I’m also responsible for setting marketing strategy for the company, and, because it’s a relatively small firm, usually implementing it as well. That means I influence/determine the company’s branding/positioning/messaging, determine our marketing goals (and how to accomplish them), identify where/how/what we will be advertising, help plan and execute promotional events including conferences, create and send out marketing emails, create sales materials, etc. Basically, like COD said, I do the marketing, public relations, and promotions, with other stuff thrown in, but I don’t manage the sales stream. That said, my role does include things like market and client research, per scarabic’s comment. In a small firm like yours, where you can’t exactly have a 10-person marketing team, if you are going to hire a Marketing Director, s/he needs to be knowledgeable and comfortable with actually doing the marketing. You should check out Marketing Director listings on various job sites to get a feel for the different scopes of the position and attributes of ideal candidates.

It doesn’t really sound like you need a sales director, and like COD and anthropoid said, you’re better off identifying what your need is and creating a position around that, rather than just decreeing that a Marketing Director is needed.

I hope this helps.
posted by ml98tu at 2:10 PM on January 8

The main problem we've been having, from my perspective, is that our growth has been somewhat limited by our lack of strategic marketing. "Business development" generally consists of answering the phone when potential clients call us, and most of our clients are repeat clients or referrals. This is all good, and we certainly get enough work this way to keep our jobs, but I think we can and should be growing. We're not reaching out to new industries or geographic areas in any organized way. Our project managers are simply too busy with their technical work (and the technical work is what they're passionate about, so this is good) to spend any time developing or implementing a marketing strategy. We already have a fairly good brand and visual identity, as well as basic marketing materials. I think our need is for developing and implementing a marketing strategy. Would a marketing director have enough to do to be satisfied with that work at a firm our size? To what level would a marketing director be involved with initiating new client contact on a project level? I realize that we can create a job describing our exact needs, but I am interested in knowing what standard operating procedures are, so we don't reinvent the wheel. Thanks for all your answers so far!
posted by faustessa at 2:59 PM on January 8

I would say that you do need a bit of both. From a distance it seems that you also lack a focused sales strategy. You need someone like ml98tu who can implement your marketing strategy and drive it through to the sales force. The last thing you need is a great marketing effort that fails because it isn't capitalized on across the entire sales force.

At the very least special attention should be given to those project managers that are obviously not being pro-active in their market. That's where you'll see the disconnect between marketing and sales.

When you start talking to any potential marketing talent you will be better off asking them what they would do to drive growth, not telling them what you want.
posted by Umhlangan at 12:32 PM on January 9

When you start talking to any potential marketing talent you will be better off asking them what they would do to drive growth, not telling them what you want.
By that I obviously mean that it will give you a good idea if you're talking to the right person.
posted by Umhlangan at 12:55 PM on January 9