Dear good people,

In smaller organisations, the role of interacting with the public is often placed in one department, whilst in bigger organisations, these roles are divided into separate departments. The dilemma of where marketing stops and sales starts is not uncommon. About 25% of businesses say their sales and marketing are not aligned or rarely aligned whereas 50% of sales time is spent on poor prospects. Organisations are now custom-defining the roles to suit their needs.

There is a great danger when the two become rivals or even do not interact enough to become friends, so as to offer each other the right support and effectively reach their customers.

In the traditional sense, marketing was the TV advert. I will never forget the one we watched as children for Hedex. You watched that ad and truly got a headache from the negative placebo effect of the hammer striking. Sales on the other hand, were the gentlemen in suits with a pen in their pocket, whom we avoided. Over time, the word sales itself gained an unpleasant reputation. All someone had to do to get avoided was say they worked in sales.

Now, making reference to my previous article, the digital space and global village has greatly and very quickly evolved both these fields. I mean, marketing is already talking of how they can utilise blockchain technology - something I am still getting my head around. And sales is not as often sales these days … it’s business development, customer experience.

The change in the title is not in vain. It is a reflection of the evolution of the role to suit our times.

There is plenty to talk about in marketing and sales with so many new and extremely exciting tools at our disposal. But for now, let’s highlight the fundamental differences between marketing and sales to clear some of the confusion and even rivalry that oftentimes takes place.

1. Marketing invites the customers to you, sales goes to the customer

• Marketing conducts market research and defines the customer and demand. From this, they are able to curate content and materials that would create awareness of the product/service and draw the customer to you by their show of interest, interaction or responding to a Call To Action i.e a link with a coupon, download guidelines, book a free trial. Given the change in the dynamics of online marketing in particular, we have found that marketing have taken on roles that were traditionally considered sales via information marketing. We are now in a world where the customer is very specific and wants to understand the details of the product they may be considering. However, marketing does this in a broad sense and is keen on the output over longer periods such as quarters of the year.
• Sales on the other hand, is interested in the shorter term outputs. This could be daily, weekly, monthly. Their role is to go to the customers that marketing has attracted and personalise that interaction. They take the customer from the initial stage of understanding the product vis-a-vis their personal need (not broad) and walking with them through that journey to purchase and post-purchase. Sales hold a high responsibility in building one of the most crucial values with a customer: trust.

2. Marketing measures lead generation, sales measures conversion

• Marketing in interested in how many promising customers they attract while sales in interested in how many of those promising customers are converted and retained. This is a VERY KEY point of necessary collaboration between sales and marketing. For example, marketing may struggle if they attract customers but the customers do not have a good conversion experience. This makes the work of marketing futile if the conversion is not happening or is very low.
• On the other hand, sales is able to guide marketing on how to better target the most suitable customer from the feedback and interactions they have during the conversion process; marketing can then improve their strategies to support sales in having more promising customers to journey with. Luckily, we now have very advanced CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) systems that make this process of lead generation to conversion smooth, transparent and measurable.

3. Marketing creates content for sales, sales uses that content to go to customers

• Marketing creates all the informative, creative and beautiful content that sales will then need to use when making contact with the customers. Sales have their own sales strategies that the marketing team comes in to support with appropriate content. Imagine what this looks like when 65% of sales reps say they can't find content to send to prospects.
• The sales strategy that will define the sales target also informs marketing on how much outreach may be required to achieve the lead generation that would meet those targets. The marketing budget is dependent on the sales target. Likewise, using previously collected data, marketing could guide sales on setting realistic targets.

So, there you go, one needs the other and we for this reason often find that marketing and sales are a combined function within an organisation. If the two compete then your goals are fragmented and unachievable. One of the ways to build that collaboration is to make the functions of both clear.

Well, good luck!