29/10/2019
Drawing a line between sales and marketing
Are you someone who gets confused between sales and marketing? If yes, then don’t worry you are not alone. Sometimes people align the sales concepts to the marketing and marketing concepts to the sales which creates all the noise.
Hopefully, after reading this article you will be in a better position to differentiate between both.
So let’s get rolling!
What is Sales?
Sales is a process in which ownership of the product is transferred from one person to another. In Sales, the product is developed first and then offered to the consumers in order to generate revenue. Sales mostly focus on the needs of the company rather than the market needs.
Sales activities include Product demo, offers, etc to generate sales.
# Real Example of Sales
A sales representative walking to your home and offering a product.
To make it simple, Think of a customer as a magnet and the product as a metal. As the metal forces its way towards the magnet, similarly the product is pushed towards the consumers.
So let’s move to marketing.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is a process of understanding the requirements of the customers and developing the Solution to address their requirements. The product or service is developed in such a way that it sells itself.
Marketing always adopts a customer-first approach and concentrates on market needs. Marketing involves activities like market research, Advertisement, etc to generate the results.
# Real Examples of Marketing
You hear about a cool cafe and you want to visit it.
To understand better let's apply the magnet concept here. But now think other way around, think of a product as a magnet and the customer as a metal. I am sure, you know what happens next.
Now the twist!
Sometimes sales can also be a part of a marketing plan. To increase the visibility in the market companies plug-in sales into their marketing plan.
Conclusion.
Both sales and marketing are critical for the survival of the business. Both are different in their approach but they are strongly interlinked to each other. Marketing adopts a pull approach and Sales adopts a push approach. But both help the business in creating its revenue.
Remember, in order to achieve marketing and sales goals, the business has to provide good quality training to their sales representatives and choose marketing channels carefully.
