The terms sales and marketing often get thrown around together and are used
interchangeably. But they're two very different business functions with
different strategies, objectives and criteria. But well, sales and marketing
are both very different they're also very important which is why in this
episode we're going to cover the key differences between sales and marketing
and help you decide which one is going to be more important for your business.
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart, modern marketing strategist and welcome to the
Modern Marketing Show where we help you grow your business by making way better
marketing. So, if you're interested in learning the latest and greatest
marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks and tactics, well, you may want to
consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell. I've said this before,
but when I first got started in business I was absolutely terrible at sales, which
probably explains why I fell in love so hard with marketing and essentially the
concept of pre selling and pre educating and pre-qualifying clients and prospects
before I ever had to do any selling. But as I gained experience and over the
years I started to see that sales was not only an incredibly valuable business
function but it was the marriage between sales and marketing that really led to
true business success. Now you can survive by just leveraging one or the
other by really focusing on just sales or just marketing, but it's the strategic
combination of both of them that really leads to true business growth. So let's
dive into that now, but before we do love to get your opinion on which camp you
think is more important, team sales or team marketing. Let me know in the
comments section below with team marketing or team sales, I'd love to hear.
So the very first thing I need to cover here is that it's incredibly important
which type of market or business or industry that you're operating in
because this is going to significantly sway the scale in one direction or
another. For example, if you're in a high-touch, high value, high-priced
business or a business that requires personal or customized solutions or the
deals with sensitive information, well then a sales focused approach is going
to be significantly better for you. This is often the case in
business-to-business or b2b businesses where the person being sold to isn't a
person at all but actually another business. Typically these interactions
are longer-term higher value higher priced and the prospect, in this case the
business, is going to need to be wined and dined a little bit before making
that decision in which case the sales approach really plays out big here. On
the other hand, if you're in a lower value lower priced business where it's
simply not realistic for the salesperson to get on the phone with every
gentle prospect, such as in the case if you're selling say supplement or a piece
of clothing or an apparel line, then a more marketing focused approach is
really going to be key here. This is often the case in business to consumer
or B2C businesses, where the end consumer is in fact an actual consumer and it's
really not realistic for the salesperson to go out there and chat with every
single one of them. After all, you're not gonna be able to call every single
person who wants to buy a bottle of vitamins or a t-shirt. Typically, B2B
businesses or those that are selling to other businesses are gonna have a more
sales focused approach that's supported by marketing. B2C businesses on the other
hand, those that sell directly to consumers are gonna have a more
marketing focused approach but you will see sales start to come into play as you
move higher up the pricing tiers. In the case with say, expensive cars or boats or
planes or real estate. So here's how sales and marketing differ. The biggest
thing to know when it comes to marketing is that marketing is typically focused
on one of two things either brand awareness or lead generation. Basically,
marketing's goal is to introduce people who could potentially buy and let them
know about the product about the service or about the business and why they
should care. Marketing wants to bring people into the ecosphere of that
company and it's their job to paint a picture of how things could be or the
end state that a customer could achieve by doing business with the company.
Another important aspect of marketing and one that'll really help to win some
favor in the sales department is by making sure that marketing is targeting
the right kind of people and allowing the marketing to do some of the
pre-qualification ensuring that the right people are getting guided into the
business's ecosphere and into the sales funnel so that sales is going to have a
higher likelihood of converting them into customers later. The big
differentiator here is the term educator which is really what marketing is all
about. Essentially educating potential customers or potential prospects about
the business or product or service about who it's for about why they should care
and about what kind of impact it can have on their lives.
Alright, so if marketing is responsible for things like brand awareness and lead
generation, well then it's sales responsibility to take all of the
awareness that was built in the leads that were generated and then convert
those leads into paying customers or clients. Where marketing is going to go
out there and tell stories and educate and inform and really paint a vivid
picture, well its sales responsibility to the
listen and ask questions and essentially learn everything it can about the
potential prospect in order to properly diagnose a solution which hopefully is
the business or product or service that is trying to sell. The best salespeople
today aren't pushy or salesy or aggressive or sleazy or anything like
the old cliches of used-car salesmen are old salespeople have passed. Rather, the
best salespeople listen. They are empathetic, they understand and they ask
a lot of questions in order to understand where the customer or
prospect is coming from so they can listen and diagnose an appropriate
solution. If marketers are educators, then salespeople are advisors and they help
to guide and advise the prospect in the direction that's best for them.
So, as different as sales and marketing are well there's still a ton of
similarities between the two. Namely the fact that both of them deploy some
strategic combination of art and science essentially understanding key features
and benefits of the product and the service but also finding ways to
leverage human interaction, buyer behavior and the psychology behind how
people make decisions. Also while B2C sales and marketing tend
to be more emotionally based and B2B sales and marketing tend to be more
logic and rational driven, well there's definitely elements to both because we
as human beings well we make decisions emotionally first and then we justify
them and back them up logically and rationally later. This is why it's
important to have both emotional and logical elements in all of your sales
and marketing. Also, both sales and marketing are gonna take a look at key
performance indicators or KPIs to make sure that they're on track to hit their
goals. These can include things like cost per lead, lead conversion rate, sales
closed percentage and customer acquisition cost. All of which are going
to help build a profitable and cohesive sales and marketing strategy. You've
heard the story, marketing blames sales for not converting the leads that they
gave them and sales blames marketing for giving them terrible and unqualified
leads. So who's right? Well, they're both kind of right and they're both kind of
wrong, because the best companies are the ones that leverage sales and marketing
and get them to work together cohesively as one strategic team doing the customer
research together and making sure that marketing is going after the right
people and then also getting feedback from sales on what message is and what
kind of marketing materials are helping to guide and to prequalify and
essentially, to help make the sales closed process that much easier it's a
never-ending feedback that all of the best companies deploy to
ensure that their sales and their marketing just keeps getting more and
more effective over time. Basically, in the best businesses sales and marketing
work together as a team. Sure, there might be different departments but they come
together as a team. So, which one's more important? Sales or Marketing? Well, as a
marketer, it's really hard for me to say this, like really hard.
Well well both of them are important the reality is that sales can succeed with
them sales can succeed without...
Just think about cold calling or door knocking or attending endless networking
events, yeah, it sounds terrible I know, which means that maybe technically sales
might be more important than marketing, but only in the short term. In the long
term, marketing wins by a landslide by building trust and loyalty and authority
and by providing more value in essentially making the sales process
that much easier. So, which one's more important? Well, the short term win
definitely goes to sales, but the long term win goes to marketing. But at the
end of the day, successful marketing leads to successful sales. The next thing
you're going to want to do is check out the video I have linked up right here
part of this B2B vs B2C series giving me more actionable strategies and
advice and things you can immediately deploy in your business. So, make sure to
check back then. Thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you next time on
The Modern Marketing Show. So, what would you like to do?
Hardly a compelling close and yet I would still more often than not make the
sale so why well.....