All too often, the two areas of sales and marketing in a company are easily confused and meshed together into one activity. While they do work hand-in-hand with each other, their perspectives and goals have significant differences, and they both place distinct roles in the success of your company. So what are the differences, and
All too often, the two areas of sales and marketing in a company are easily confused and meshed together into one activity. While they do work hand-in-hand with each other, their perspectives and goals have significant differences, and they both place distinct roles in the success of your company.
So what are the differences, and why are they even important? Here’s a brief overview on where the contrasts between the two are and how that plays into your company’s success!
The Target
MARKETING: Marketing targets a wider range of the audience at one time. It is a “one to many” outreach approach.
SALES: Sales, on the other hand, goes after specific, pre-identified prospects that have already been marked as potential leads. This is usually a “one to one” outreach approach.
Marketers message to a large audience | Salespeople communicate to certain, selected people
The Focus
MARKETING: Marketing focuses on generating leads. This department in a company utilizes various marketing strategies and efforts to bring in desirable prospective clients and provoke them to ask for more information on the product/service.
SALES: Sales focuses on generating purchases/orders. They utilize sales techniques to guide prospective clients towards making a “yes/no” decision (primarily a “yes” decision) in regards to the buying the product/service being offered.
Marketers generate quality leads | Salespeople generate actual sales from these potential leads
The Drive
MARKETING: Marketing is driven by data, information that helps decipher what type of people desire what kind of product, where and when.
SALES: Sales, however, is driven by the relationships made with prospects, building rapport and later talking about business.
Marketers utilize mass behavior to drive campaigns | Salespeople create individual association to support their sales
The Measurement
MARKETING: Marketing can be significantly more complicated to measure than sales. The success of marketing is based on various engagement and response rates of marketing efforts, often woven together, including email, social, website, digital advertising, etc. Marketing is not as clear to measure in all cases, and the influence can be over a longer period.
SALES: However, sales is much more easily gauged. Sales success can be measured by the number of sales over the number of attempts made to capture a sale.
Marketing is measured by the ability to gain attention | Sales is measured by the ability to close sales
The Brand Value
MARKETING: Marketing is a key component of enhancing the brand prior to selling. After the detailed research of who, how and what, marketing turns this information into a desirable brand of a product or service. This is what initially attracts potential customers.
SALES: On the other hand, sales is a key component of post selling brand value. Sales can help establish a brand name once a sale is complete, by provoking referrals and creating strong relationships.
Marketers PRIMARILY enhance exposure | Salespeople PRIMARILY build reputation
While there are significant differences in what and how these two areas perform, the main takeaway is that there is clearly a connection between what each one does. They do not exist independent of each other, but rather fuel each other’s activities. Sales data fuels marketing targeting efforts, marketing efforts generate leads which give salespeople their potential sales, and so on and so forth. Understanding the goals of each and maintaining the balance and connection between these two is paramount to a company’s success.
