Hi, welcome back. This is a special meeting. We will have an interview about the challenges in sales and marketing harmonization. In the past lessons, we discussed the main areas of friction between marketing and sales, as well as the mindsets that make the interaction particularly tricky. Today, we will have the opportunity to hear about these conflicts in real life from someone who has been on both sides of the fence, as a Marketer and later, as a Key Account Manager. We'll get to meet Mr. Alexandre Gonçalves, an executive in the Brazilian Healthcare industry. Let's hear what he has to say. Alexandre, welcome to the strategic sales management specialization. Thanks a lot for taking the time to meet our students and share some of our experience. Hi Cesar. Hi folks. Thanks for the invitation, it's my pleasure to be here. I hope that we will have a very nice conversation today. Thank you. So to start, Alexandre, could you talk a little about your career? Yes. Well, I am an engineer from my academic background. After that, I've joined the European pharmaceutical company where I've spent most of my career. I started as a management trainee, after that, I went to marketing in primary care in the pharmaceutical business. After I spent some years in product launches, I moved to sales on the non-retail business, a completely different business. I've spent some years on that. I had the opportunity after that to go to a regional position based outside Brazil. In my return to Brazil, back to sales again, in a point of sales and retail for business. And in the end, where I spent the last years, I was a business unit head in charge of both marketing and sales. And when you first started in marketing, what were the main pain points when dealing with the sales force? Well, in the last organizations in the past, we used to have at the beginning, different organizations. So, the first pain point I would say that was different leadership and different guidelines. That was the first point. I think the other point it was not to have a clear and transparent communications and usually have different objectives in terms of marketing and sales. And another point, in my opinion, was the the view of the regional marketing, the very tight co-marketing and a more strategic marketing that usually the marketeers used to follow. And of course, we have some frictions in areas of tension on that And, so tell us, how did you deal with those obstacles? So, it was what least worked for me at the time. But I think, the first point is to build a relationship based on trust. That was the first point. And another point for me was to really have a clear and transparent communication with the teams. To really, to be open to listen to teams, to listen the, let's say, main concerns and another point, that's for me, it's a critical point for all the marketeers, is to be based on arguments based on data and analytics. That you are able to convince the teams to show the gaps, to show the issues that we have in the implementation or even the opportunities to be more efficiency and to gain on your objectives. Good. Thank you. There are some marketers that they get to be very charismatic figures and have a wonderful relationship with the sales force. Basically, they can get whatever they want. What's their trick? Can you learn that? And actually, is that enough for a marketer to succeed and to build this level of alignment with the sales force? Well, based on my experience, I had a chance to have colleagues that was really charismatic and other ones that was really introspective. And I would say that for my side I used to be in the middle of them and I would say that of course, it helps a lot to be charismatic, because it will be easier to build on trust, to get the engagement of the teams. But I think that's not enough. I think I have seen some marketeers that were more, let's say, introspective and they have a very good relationship. They are able to transmit their message, their strategies, what they want from the teams. Basically, I think these charismatic people, key characteristic of them, they were able to listen to teams and more than able to listen, they are able to transmit to the teams that they are open to listen. I think this is a key point to succeed. And even these people that used to be more introspective, they used to be more, let's say, open to listen to things. Okay. You have worked in international roles where you had responsibility for several countries in both sales and marketing. Is this something that, this conflict, this friction between sales and marketing, is something that happens in every country? Basically, it happens in every country. Based on my experience, through Latin America and some short assignments in exchange with other regions of the globe. I think happen all the time. It's a natural tension by nature and is something that you have to deal. Okay. So, after these positions that you held in the international level, you come back to your company, you come back to Brazil and you take a role in as a key account manager, as a sales manager, why was that? Based on my career path, and I had that the vision, the ambition is to be a general manager at that time. I think it's mandatory or it helps a lot when you are more close to the customers, you are able to face with the day-to-day activities and not only with the medium term, the long term. I used to have a comparison or an analogy that when you are in marketing usually, you have your remote control like airplane models, you are piloting your airplane models from your chair, let's say, anywhere on sales or you are in a position face to face with your customers, you are like in the cockpit feeling the bumps, everything that you have in the day-to-day, I think basically, it's the the interesting point and it's good to have both experiences. So, you get there, you've been a marketing guy practically your whole life and then, there you are, working with salespeople that have been in sales their whole life. Did they treat you different like as a marketing guy? How was that relationship? I think this is more in the beginning when you've just joined the position, people feel a little bit suspicious about what's going to happen, what this different guy here, he doesn't know what the customer feels like, something like that. But when you are start running the job and you demonstrate that you are able to deal with the issues and you are able even to contribute with more analytical skills, with more strategical skills and you help in the execution, that's in the end of the day part of the job of the salespeople to execute according to the plans and while you have this both view, we were able to add value to the position, people start to respect. And I imagine that after some time working with the salespeople in developing this level of trust, they started sharing their ideas and complaining about marketing, what did they use to say? Well, I think the first thing is that all these marketing guys doesn't know what happens in the field. This is the far thing. The other point and people used to complain a lot it's that marketing, it's far away from our reality. They are not closing enough of the customers, so they don't know what happen in the day-to-day. All these plans is not connected to the reality. I think this is more what happens in the day-to-day and usually, how you can deal with this gap, it's really to be more close both sales and marketing functions. And as I understand after some time, after few years, you got in a position then both marketing and sales reported to you, and you had both sides of the experience. What did you do to improve the sales and marketing alignment? I think one first key point as a leader of a business, or a business unit, or any general manager position, whatever, that it will be responsible for both marketing and sales. I think it's clearly to have open communication and transparency into communication. This is the first point. The second point for me it's really to build together all the plans. When you start building in a plan, even a marketing plan or technical plan, if you are able, the marketeer to collect, all the, and to have people from sales participating to build this plan helps a lot and gives a sense to the sales teams so that they are part of the construction of the plan. And the third point, it's for me how you communicate these plans and how with anticipation that you communicate to these plans. That's very important since the beginning to show to the sales teams and that's common objective that this plan was built together with sales, with the input of them. I think you increase the sense of property, the sense of to belong to that plan that if I could say I'm this way. Great. Then, let's seek to finish. What advice would you give to both salespeople and marketers on how to better get along? In my point of view, I think communication between definition and open is, it's key. Of course, in theory, it's quite easy to say but in the reality day-to-day, every function tries to defend or to protect themselves. And for this reason, I talk about openness and the other point is to alignment of expectation and objectives. If you have a clear alignment of expectation and objectives among the functions, a chance to succeed, it is even greater and probably you'll have a lot of success on that Well, Alexandre, thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your experience, share your ideas. This is going to be extremely valuable to us. During our next lessons where we'll discuss theory, and also, there will be a course assignment, in which our students will try to solve real-life issues between sales and marketing. And this is again, this was very, very, very valuable. Thank you so much. Thank you, Cesar. It was my pleasure and it's my honor to contribute to all the students and I'm sure that sales and marketing together, they can build more for their organizations. Thank you. Thank you.
