The Age-Old Debate Rages On: Marketing vs. Sales

Many businesses struggle with striking the right balance between their marketing and sales efforts. Hopefully, most of us are enlightened enough to know that without marketing finding prospects or leads to follow up with would be much more difficult and without a good sales strategy closing the transactions that bring in revenue would be darn near impossible.

The 'traditional' definition of marketing is 'everything that you do to reach and persuade prospects.' Sales are everything that you do to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract. A business won't survive without both of these functions, however, an organization will thrive if the right balance is struck between them.

Think about marketing as setting the stage for sales to occur. If your prospects have never heard of your company or its products and a salesperson contacts them, the sales process is going to be that much harder and longer. Good marketing reaches the right prospects with the right message to create demand, preparing the prospect to buy. Marketing can include advertising, public relations, brand marketing, viral marketing, direct mail, social media, and online activites--just to name a few tactics.

Traditionl sales usually involves some sort of interpersonal interaction. E-commerce has added a different kind of dynamic where the interaction happens through an online transaction (note: it is usually marketing efforts that get prospects to the site to purchase.)

Research has shown that it takes eight contacts to move a prospect or potential client to the close of the sale. Marketing can move a prospect along in the process and 'warm' them up for a sales professional to close the deal. For most organizations, success in marketing and in sales depends on balance!