All too often, organizations find that they have a marketing function inside Sales, and a sales function inside Marketing
You’d think that marketing and sales teams, whose work is also deeply interconnected, would have discovered something similar. As a rule, though, they’re separate functions within an organization, and, when they do work together, they don’t always get along. When sales are disappointing, Marketing blames the sales force for its poor execution of an otherwise brilliant rollout plan. The sales team, in turn, claims that Marketing sets prices too high and uses too much of the budget, which instead should go toward hiring more salespeople or paying the sales reps higher commissions. This eventually creates a conflict between marketing and sales in office culture.
Product designers learned years ago that they’d save time and money if they consulted with their colleagues in manufacturing rather than just throwing new designs over the wall. The two functions realized it wasn’t enough to just coexist—not when they could work together to create value for the company and for customers.
Marketing believes the sales force is myopic—too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market, and blind to the future. In short, each group often undervalues the other’s contributions. This lack of alignment ends up hurting corporate performance. Time and again, during research and consulting assignments, we’ve seen both groups stumble (and the organization suffer) because they were out of sync. Conversely, there is no question that, when Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement in important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower.
As companies become larger and more successful, executives recognize that there is more to marketing than setting the four P’s: product, pricing, place, and promotion. They determine that effective marketing calls for people skilled in segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Once companies hire marketers with those skills, Marketing becomes an independent player. It also starts to compete with Sales for funding. While the sales mission has not changed, the marketing mission has. Disagreements arise.
Hence, the main difference between sales and marketing is that sales are generally based upon short goals and small targets and are mostly focused on generating enough profit by targeting an individual audience.
Whereas, in marketing; the main goal is to create direct communication with the audience and promote the brand to the widest possible audience and generate potential leads. Also, based upon long-term goals and focuses on the bigger picture.
Marketing & Sales Strategies:
Marketing strategies mostly rely on the 4P’s of marketing;
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
A marketing strategy can be designed after gaining proper information about the targeted audience and what they prefer. Whereas, a sales strategy requires oneself to connect with potential customers and convert them into business.
Once the marketing team figures out their target audience, they can run campaigns and try out different strategies to attract the audience. Whereas, in sales, the salesperson contacts the potential customer and based on the requirement pitches, in the product and services
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Sales and marketing are two different entities as a whole, and understanding the differences between them can help you plan your career accordingly. Although they are different, both have to go hand-in-glove to give the business its much-required push in the longer run.
