Marketing and Sales

You might have wondered, "What's the difference between marketing and sales? Don't both of them just try to sell products to consumers?". Although marketing and sales have very close ties, their organizational roles and strategies can differ. Even though the sales team follows the overall marketing strategy set by marketers, they use their own techniques and tactics to achieve their objectives. Read along to find out how!

Sales and Marketing Techniques

Before we dive into more detail about the relationship between marketing and sales, let's first examine the nature of both concepts.

Of course, in reality, marketing and sales are much more complicated and involve various tasks that lead to the final sale of a product. Sales go beyond cold-calling customers, and marketing goes beyond creating advertisements.

As a result, to achieve synergy between sales and marketing, the business must pay close attention to various strategies and stakeholders, including its sales force. A company's salesforce is crucial, especially in business-to-business (B2B) and service marketing environments.

The salesforce is frequently the first point of contact customers have with a business and, as a result, acts as the face of the company. Therefore, some of the marketing and sales techniques and skills salespeople must be familiar with and excel at include:

• Problem-solving: providing a solution to the customer's problem. Problem-solving is essential in B2B environments.

• Adding value: recognizing customer pain points and providing feedback to the firm to add value to products and satisfy customer needs.

• Marketing or advertising the product: the salesperson should know how to market the product beyond just calling the customer to explain its benefits. The salesperson should know how to present, manage databases, create webinars, etc., to persuade the customer to purchase the product.

• Need recognition: recognize that customers may have needs they are unaware of. For instance, the salesperson might be selling a new product or system the customer didn't even know existed. As a result, the salesforce must be able to handle these situations with care.

• Customer relationship management (CRM): The salesforce should recognize that closing a sale does not signify the end of their relationship with the customer. Building long-lasting customer relationships are the primary objective of many marketing and sales strategies. As a result, the salesperson must be familiar with customer retention tactics.

Sales and Marketing Difference

Let's now turn our attention to a mini business history lesson. The difference between marketing and sales can partially be traced to the various eras of marketing. Over the past decade, business orientation has developed as follows (see Figure 1 below):

1. Product/Production - Originally, businesses focused predominantly on the product they were selling. Mass production objectives can characterize the product era. This approach involved producing as much as possible (increasing production output), taking advantage of economies of scale that result from high production levels, and maintaining operational efficiency in terms of production. The idea was that customer demand will always persist for standard products, so businesses should aim to maximize supply and provide these products at low prices.

2. Sales - As a result of the product-focus era, new competitors started entering the market as they realized that they could also produce similar products on a large scale. Thus, the rivalry intensified, and companies began focusing on sales. This new era followed the idea that customers would be hesitant to buy new products without sales, especially due to the wide range of products available on the market. Therefore, companies pushed for various hard-selling techniques to entice customers to buy a product.

   The sales era and its many dishonest hard-sell techniques gave rise to the stereotypical image many of us still have of salespeople. For example, bribing company reps with luxury watches or extravagant vacations to buy your product was essentially invented during this era.

3. Marketing - This is the final era we are most likely familiar with. Here, the emphasis is on understanding customer wants and needs and creating products to satisfy them. Production stems from customers rather than from the company. This approach also focuses on building long-term customer relationships by researching customer behaviors and attitudes and analyzing the impacts of marketing efforts.

Although the marketing and sales eras have their fundamental differences, they are much more closely related nowadays. Marketing plays a huge role in sales and vice versa. Let's now take a look at this relationship in further detail.

Relationship between Marketing and Sales

Due to the nature of marketing and sales activities, the two are closely related. Firstly, the marketing process and the 4Ps of the marketing mix also apply to sales.

Similarly to marketing, the sales process also involves market segmentation, targeting, and positioning to ensure that the business targets profitable customer groups. Additionally, sales teams must familiarize themselves with the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, and place) to ensure that they are selling customers the product they need, at fair prices, through the channel that suits them best. As a result, marketing strategies have a significant impact on sales.

A further connection between marketing and sales is the ultimate drive to build long-term customer relationships. Nowadays, businesses invest significantly in CRM. While marketers use promotions and various communications techniques to inform and retain customers, sales use similar offers and account management techniques to build long-lasting customer relationships.

Another similarity between the two is that salespeople must understand how to create and add customer value, recognize customer needs, advertise the product, etc., just in a slightly different way from marketers. Therefore the boundary between the two is not clear cut as sales and marketing rely on each other to achieve overall corporate and business goals.

Marketing and Sales Example

Now that we understand the general idea of marketing and sales let's look at a few examples.

We may also observe another marketing and sales example through Wix.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

The marketing and sales strategy begins with the marketing and sales planning process. For sales to be effective, the firm must develop a strategic marketing plan. This ensures that sales function cohesively with marketing activities.

The sales planning process is as follows (see Figure 2 below):

1. Determine objectives,

2. Define the activities needed to achieve set objectives,

3. Evaluate resources,

4. Implement the strategy,

5. Assess results,

6. Evaluation and control.

The firm must also define its marketing plan in conjunction with the sales planning process. This process includes ensuring that marketing objectives are aligned with corporate objectives and the overall mission and analyzing the internal and external environment (including competitor analysis).

Once these marketing analyses have been conducted, it is time to focus on the sales strategy and generate a sales forecast. An example of a sales strategy may be described as follows:

1. Segmentation and targeting - To align with marketing strategy, sales must also understand which customers to target with their efforts. Selecting and targeting the correct customer segments will ensure higher sales revenues.

2. Pricing - Pricing plays a huge role in sales. The sales team might implement promotions or offer discounts to large-scale buyers, in line with marketing's pricing and promotion strategies. The sales team can also provide feedback to marketing about customers' pricing and value for money perceptions.

3. Customer retention - In line with marketing strategies, sales also focuses on customer retention as it is easier to retain customers than find new ones. Following a customer retention strategy, sales work with marketing to determine customer pain points and assess the critical customer relationship stages. Sales and marketing also work together to understand acquisition costs, manage the customer purchase journey, and create customer relationships.

Together, marketing and sales strategies ensure that the right customers are targeted and that the company or brand forms longstanding profitable relationships with all its customers.