Book review: Escaping the Black Hole: Minimizing the damage from the marketing-sales disconnect

Fellow Virginian Schmonsees effectively describes the disconnect between the marketing and sales functions and why this disconnect exists in the first place. He then prescribes the cure.

The cure is contained in his conceptual framework of managing core intellectual assets much like Work In Process in a manufacturing environment. Imagine if you will defining every benefit, every value statement and every bit of information about your products and services in bite-sized chunks and keeping these in an inventory silo. Then imagine being able to pull, combine and deliver these assets to prospects and customers at the very moment these assets are best able to demonstrate the value you can deliver to your customers -- and doing it all in the most compelling way based on how each specific customer prefers to make purchasing decisions. Marketing creates the customer value and creates all the supporting materials and arguments in an a la carte, standardized and sanctioned fashion and then combines, compiles and delivers these materials to Sales exactly when and how they need them to make the most compelling case of how your firm will deliver value to your customers. Part marketing, part branding, part sales, part information technology, part inventory management but 100% focused on delivering value to your customers in a systematic way.

That is the essence of this book.

This is an invaluable resource for managers and executives in all mid- to large-sized companies. I highly recommend it.