Marketing Vs Sales Or Is it?

Marketing Drives Sales and Sales Create the need for Marketing.

An effective marketing campaign leads to a good sale and a good sale results into an excellent Marketing success. I am sure all of us have heard this before. I threw this into a discussion forum on LinkedIn. I throughly enjoyed the response it was truly amaging to learn from so many learned people out there. In this post I am just trying to sum up some of the thoughts from our discussion though I am sure that there will be many more additions to it and I wont want to miss out on any. (I am just so excited to see the response from the people I could not stop myself)

"Imagine a battlefield. Marketing is your Air force i.e. it does carpet bombing but in a targeted location and Sales is your Infantry...you cannot claim to have captured the location until your infantry goes in and secures the location on-the-ground. " - Manish D Marketing Manager Nokia.

I like what Manish had to say simply because it makes me feel like a martyr saving my company, I save 100s of jobs in my company by my performance and even that of the Marketing guys..hahaha...But no really this is cool isnt it??

Jacob Rene Gabriel, AVP Yes Bank says and I quote

1. "Grab attention.
2. Hold Interest.
3. Create desire.
4. Elicit action.
   Of the steps mentioned above...marketings job is the first three.the fourth step is sales. "
   

I think this is what we always do whether we are selling or not. In our day to day chores as well. But yes functionally as the two departments this is exactly what i would like to see.

"A great marketing campaign drives business to the door, however, if you don't have a sales bulldog to meet that lead, the marketing is worthless." says Seth Dudley, VP Business Development Senior Living Residences.

"There is no competition, or one or the other. The business strategy must determine which is the best approach to both get new clients and satisfy existing ones. " - Mike Driver, Corporate Change CRM.

Steve Smith, a Small Business Expert elaborates this in the most beautiful manner one can ask for. Steve if you read this blog ever, I truly truly loved your view..

"All too often, the set-up and objectives of the marketing department and the sales force are diametrically opposed. Marketing is usually tasked with developing the market's potential with new products, advertising, promotions, etc. while the sales force is supposed to develop the client relationship and convince them to buy what marketing has developed. That traditional relationship has some big holes in it. While marketing is focused on a particular demographic, consumer base or trade channel, sales is focused on individual clients within those designated channels. Frequently, it's a matter of understanding who the customer really is. As an example, many consumer goods companies will have their marketing teams focus their efforts on the end purchasing consumer- makes a lot of sense. The sales team, however, is focused on the retailers or distributors that make their product available to the consumer. What works 'for' the consumer doesn't always work 'with' the retailer. If you've ever called on Walmart, you now that many manufacturers will have completely different marketing teams and plans for Walmart as they have for the rest of the market. And if Walmart is a big enough customer to that manufacturer, there may not be a marketing plan for the rest of the market.

All this means that sales and marketing should be strategically align. Sales is in position to gain the customer's business because they have their finger on the pulse of that customer's decision making process. This is something marketing rarely can accomplish. Marketing on the other hand, has to develop products or services that sales can actually sell becuase they mean something to the client being served. Without this kind of working relationship, many companies begin entertaining the notion of trading the players as a means of improving the alignment. In the few situations I have been involved in, the solution was to create a liason positon between sales and marketing. This position works with internal marketing but spoke from a sales perspective. This way, you end up with a marketing team that has a real world understanding of what sales needs to advance the company's market share position or generate new streams of revenue. Not an easy task, but one that plugs the biggest hole between sales and marketing- no communication about what's working."

"Marketing is where the rubber meets the sky and sales is where the rubber meets the road." - Becky Guillory, Principal at Kris and Company.

My two cents from all of this an Ideal world is where there are no challenges and real world is where we all live and breathe to set and see new challenges. We are talking about Sales and Marketing which are like sisters but often fail to behave like one. From an Owner to an Individual Contributor, from a Supply to a demand, everything has a scope to better than what it is. Atleast I like to believe so and I am sure many would like to agree.

Marketing Vs Sales!! LinkedIn Discussion