Titles and managers

Interesting how the words in manager titles can have such a big difference. During my career I have met several managers having in their title "sales and marketing" only to discover that actually they are sales managers. On top of sales responsibility they manage marketing but marketing is diminished to brochures, leaflets, customer events, fairs and other marketing communication tactical tools. These managers have little competence from marketing therefore to do the actual job they have outsourced the work by hiring a marketing communications manager. Marketing has become marketing communications but is titled as marketing.

I have also met several managers whose title is marketing manager only to discover role actually covers only marketing communications. These managers have more strategic view to the marketing communications when role covers aspects of brand management... but normally only from the marketing communications view point. When discussing aspects of sales with these managers they rather quickly withdraw from the conversation indicating clearly it is not in their comfort zone. Real marketing managers have and should have sales in their comfort zone - to face and convince customers to buy.

Then we have managers whose title is sales manager - in this text these are not my in focus because their role is clear and simple as their title indicates - to sell today and tomorrow. More interesting are these various titles and definitions of marketing because in many cases actual real activities of marketing are missing. Discussions around pricing management or offering development just as examples are out of bounds with these earlier mentioned marketing managers even with the first one mentioned "sales and marketing managers".

Things get more complicated when we add to the plate partnerships development, solutions development, online services, channel mix design, customer relationship management, customer base management, experience management, etc. - all part of real marketing at least in my vocabulary. Maybe I have just misunderstood something or my definition of marketing is too much business development flavored. For too many marketing is closer to communications than business development and I must accept this fact of life.

Still one more try - anyway companies need to develop and manage things I mentioned above in an integrated manner. Whose role it is and what should be the title when titles above are reserved for operational aspects of business. Marketing business development managers (no) or just business development managers... but then marketing managers should be called as marketing communications managers.

In the end titles are just titles but words in titles and their defined meanings in the organization indicate the mindset of the company. Thank god sales is so much more simple with its definition.