What’s the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?

I met with a new network contact recently. During our conversation, I was asked what I thought the difference was between sales & marketing.

Aren’t Sales and Marketing the same thing? Does a business need both?

What a great question! How many other businesses feel the same? Surely if you’re making sales, you must be marketing, right? And if you’re making sales why would you need any marketing strategy, expertise or investment if it’s already ‘working’?

In my time working in corporate and SME’s, sales and marketing have always gone hand in hand. For me, it’s vital for the marketing ‘team’ to know how the sales ‘team’ are presenting the products, capturing the sales and nurturing the client relationships.

Equally, it’s vital for the sales team to know the benefits of the products, what gives them the advantage over the competition, and what promotional opportunities are available.

A good definition of marketing for me would be…

‘The activity a business carries out to reach their target audience; create awareness, an interest, a realisation of need for the product and finally for that target audience to act in terms of buying.’

The marketing activity that goes behind this could be establishing proof of the benefits to that prospect, communicating in a way that demonstrates that target audience has a requirement or pain point that this offering will fulfil, or providing the sales team with the tools needed to carry out their own activity.

Sales on the other hand I think is summed up as…

‘Activity required to finalise and close a sale agreement between the business and the prospect.’

Both sales and marketing are, to a point, interchangeable and should be grouped together as without one or the other the goal to ultimately sell and make profit will not reach optimal levels. However, equally, both have their own merits and need to be considered separately to ensure maximising the processes and impact in each case.

Marketing basically gets your target audience ‘through the door’; sales is the process of getting that audience to say ‘yes’ and buy from you.

That process to get your perfect client ‘through the door’, however, tends to take time. Marketing has to be a long term time investment, results are rarely immediate and need understanding, interpretation, analysis and testing to ensure the activity is meeting the needs of the prospects identified. Marketing supports the sales process and makes it easier to secure sales, and ultimately make profit (the reason why most organisations are in business).

In conclusion…

the difference between marketing & sales, in my opinion, is that that yes, you can make sales without marketing, but they probably won’t be the at the optimum level for your business. Your activity will be based on luck, not knowledge, your results will not be consistent and therefore the performance of the business erratic and not sustainable,

I’ve never heard of a business that couldn’t deal with more sales and profit, have you?

With a marketing strategy, tools, tactics and activity in place, the process to get those sales is smoother, quicker and will be more sustainable, resulting in consistent business growth. What marketing tools & tactics your business needs or what your strategy would look like does take some time & investment but the results will outweigh that, providing your business with strong, sustainable, profitable combined sales and marketing activity, and make a positive impact on your business’ bottom line.

Do you think your business would like more sales? Or increased profit?

Not sure where to find them? Book yourself a 45-minute complimentary introductory call with me and we can discuss where your next sales & marketing opportunities might be.