What is the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?

Some organizations go so far as categorizing the two together and sometimes they even have the same department for both business functions. It is important for an organization to distinguish between the two as their main functions are very different from each other and amalgamating the two can be harmful for an organization. In this article, we will help you differentiate between sales and marketing and will provide some insights on what are the functions.

What’s the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?

To understand the difference between sales and marketing we first need to understand what exactly these two business functions do for an organization. While they both have a key role to play in the generation of leads and revenue, how they do that is slightly different from one another? Sales entail all the activities done to sell a good or service. It is responsible for managing relationships with prospective clients and retaining current customers. The salespeople pitch the product or service to the potential client in a way that ensures the product meets the requirements of the client and provides substantial benefits to them. The better the pitch they give to their clients the more are the chances for that potential client to turn into a paying customer. 

Marketing includes all the activities performed to spread awareness, generate interest and create desire amongst the target customers. The initial phases of the marketing process have more to do with research and analysis. Marketers conduct surveys and research about the industry they operate in to come up with a target market. Then via their research, they also decide which marketing tools they would use to market the products to that target market. They devise different marketing strategies to approach the target market in the best way possible. They are responsible for running campaigns that would spread awareness and attract customers to the products or services they are marketing. 

Sales vs. Marketing 

To further understand sales vs marketing, we’ll discuss the difference between them in terms of goals, process, scope, and strategy. 

Goals

Marketing goals are relatively long-term as compared to sales goals. They are more focused on increasing brand awareness and interest, increase market share and nurture the leads so they go down the marketing funnel and become paying customers. Sales goals are normally short-term goals, they mostly encompass reaching targets and completing quotas. The salesperson might schedule a couple of meetings with clients to make sure they purchase the product but the efforts are mostly short-term and a salesperson doesn’t normally take a lot of time on each client. They tend to wrap things up quickly. 

Process

The marketing process is pretty elaborate; it starts with research and ends with activities that are made to convert potential customers. The research and analysis help devise a marketing strategy, target market, value proposition, and marketing tools that would be used. There is a schedule set in place for each activity. A marketing process is ongoing and ever-evolving. A Lot of trial and error goes into it. Different marketing tools are tested to see which one works the best. Whilst a sales process is more abrupt as compared to marketing. It basically covers approaching the clients, understanding their needs, providing a solution, closing the sale, and following up later. These steps are repeated in the same order on all the clients.

Scope

Marketing has a wide scope as it covers all the activities starting from idea generation to realization. Marketing includes all of the important touchpoints from product development, price, promotion, events, persons, and places. Sales touch all the sectors responsible for client dealings like client prospecting, order collections, and complaint handling. 

Sales Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy

When it comes to sales vs marketing strategy. Marketing strategy mostly maps out the direction or path you will take to find and engage the target market so you can successfully make them aware of your product or service and encourage them to buy it by sparking interest in them. Whereas a sales strategy is basically how well you can sell a particular product or service to the potential customer and how successfully you can convert them into buyers. 

Should I focus more on sales or marketing for my business?

They are both important business functions and in retrospect, sales are dependent on marketing. Marketing helps generate potential leads. It helps the sales department find and qualify leads. The leads are then contacted by the sales teams from where they embark on a sales cycle which turns those leads into paying customers. 

Let Us Help You

Both marketing and sales are equally important for your business and are dependent on one another. The sales team gets the leads from the marketing department. And the marketing team gets insights into clients’ needs and requirements. Both business functions help you generate leads and increase revenue. Our expert marketers can help you devise an effective marketing strategy so you can take full advantage of this well-adjusted cycle.