I’m not much of a betting woman, but I’d guess Sales. And it wouldn’t be close.

Money talks. And while Sales focus on immediate cash, marketing is usually focused on the longer picture.

There’s a problem I’ve seen in recruitment businesses however for years, that makes this fight quite literal.

The fact is, Sales and Marketing should be on the same team.

But so many of the recruitment marketing teams I’ve seen over the years have proliferated marketing material that has little, or no relevance to their recruitment sales team it’s like they’re working against them.

In the same way some of the best recruiters once worked in the industries they now recruit into, some of the best recruitment marketers were once recruiters.

Sadly, people making that move is rare.

If your Marketing team doesn’t have an intimate relationship with Sales, in any business, they’re likely to fail.

And I know I need to be careful talking about intimate relationships in recruitment businesses… but the point stands.

I’m a recruiter in Financial Crime. That’s my only area of focus. It’s all I talk about day in, day out. Apart from recfindr.

But if I were to work in a business where the recruitment specialisms covered multiple niches, and the business threw out marketing material that offered little or no context to my specialism, it would dramatically hinder my sales.

I don’t think that’s insightful.

And yet, it seems to be, looking at the landscape of marketing from recruitment businesses.

The marketing I publish must, as a pre-requisite, broach the subjects on the minds of those I place. And the businesses I place people with.

My candidates.

My clients.

And more importantly, those who are neither, but could be.

Therefore, it’s my belief, that the only person doing my marketing should be me.

And that the only person doing your marketing should be you.

Or, if you can find them, someone who knows you and your business extremely well.

The keys to the city

I don’t believe Marketing should be allowed the keys of your business marketing if they can’t address, and solve your customers’ problems.

Isn’t that what marketing is? It should drive sales. Not hinder them.

Are the days of company marketing even still valid if the business focuses on so many different industries?

As I see it, there are two solutions if you’ve fallen into the trap of hiring ‘days of the year’ marketing merchants in your recruitment business…

1. Train your recruiters to be better marketers.
2. Train your marketers to listen to your recruiters.

If there’s no conversation between either team, marketing might as well not exist.

Great Marketing teams inhabit the top, middle and bottom of the sales funnel. They intertwine constantly with those making sales. They listen to their Sales team. They know the common hesitations and objections. They know when they change. And they understand how the service you offer can overcome them.

Recruitment founders and owners love saying their consultants are running a business within a business.

They apparently hate giving the responsibility for marketing to the people who know how to make sales.

If you actually employ people who run a business within a business, stop forcing them to put up with sub-standard marketing. Either ‘reallocate’ marketing’s efforts , or make them better.

And if you’re a recruiter…

If you work for someone else, here’s a thinking exercise for you.

Imagine you worked for yourself. Imagine you had a business managing your back office function.

Would you ever, in a million years, allow the diatribe, hyperbole driven drivel you see from the vast majority of recruitment businesses into the ether?

Would you leave the success of your business to marketing that didn’t solve your network’s problems?

Of course you wouldn’t.

But you do work for yourself.

So why are you doing it now?