What is the difference between sales and marketing?

Join thousands of digital marketers and get our gmail newsletter & updates delivered directly to lớn your inbox!

Have you ever asked yourself, “Just what is the difference between sales and marketing?”

If so, you’ve sầu come to the right place.

Bạn đang xem: What is the difference between sales and marketing?

That’s because in today’s post, we’ll be helping you lớn understand the difference between your kinh doanh plan và your sales strategy.

Most of the confusion comes from the fact that sales activities và kinh doanh efforts often look similar, and so you can forgive people for getting the two mixed up. It can help khổng lồ think of them as lượt thích the mạng internet và gmail – two different technologies but which coexist together.

Marketing campaigns often ayên ổn to lớn create leads for your sales funnel so that your sales reps can then follow up with them and turn them into paying customers.

As if that’s not confusing enough, sales reps often use kinh doanh techniques – such as special offers or miễn phí gifts – to lớn encourage people lớn cross the line.

Still, if you’re a business owner then you need lớn know the difference between kinh doanh & sales activities if you want lớn be successful.

At the same time, you need lớn rethành viên the similarities between the two – after all, both disciplines are ultimately about improving your brvà image & creating connections with customers. It’s not B2B or B2C, it’s B2Phường – business-to-person.

But just because some people get the two disciplines confused, it doesn’t mean that you can’t underst& the difference. And the good news is that there’s no need for you khổng lồ worry because we’re here khổng lồ teach you everything you need to know.

What Is The Difference Between Sales And Marketing

What Is Marketing?

Understanding the difference between selling and kinh doanh is tricky because the difference between the two is subtle.

One good definition is that kinh doanh is all about getting people interested in your company’s products & services, while sales is specifically about selling those products & services.

Marketing doesn’t necessarily have sầu to lớn be about selling.

For example, marketing teams often dedicate a significant amount of resources towards generating attention and capturing eyeballs, as opposed lớn pushing for a hard sale.

On top of that, kinh doanh teams often spkết thúc a lot of time & attention on more intangible tasks lượt thích developing a brvà identity, improving a brand image or launching a public relations campaign.

While your sales force might be measured and monitored based upon how many direct sales they score, your sale team is more likely khổng lồ be evaluated on a wide range of different attributes.

Another thing to lớn keep in mind is that there are multiple different types of sale focuses. Typically, most sale campaigns can be classified under one of the following two categories:

Outbound Marketing

This old style of marketing involves interrupting people by advertising và other more intrusive sầu techniques.

It still has a place in a modern kinh doanh plan, but it’s certainly not the be-all & end-all. Some of the most comtháng outbound marketing focuses include:

Television ads

Billboards

Direct mail

Magazine ads

Inbound Marketing

This new approach to lớn marketing involves providing kick-ass kinh doanh content to lớn entertain, surprise và delight your customers. It’s made possibly by digital sale, though it’s not synonymous with it.

The goal is khổng lồ bring people lớn you on search engines and social networking sites instead of interrupting them with old school advertising.

Examples include:

Content marketing

Social truyền thông media marketing

E-Mail marketing

Search engine optimization

What Is Sales?

When done right, selling is all about asking people to lớn invest in you. You’re reaching out to potential customers & asking them lớn take out their wallets và khổng lồ give you their money.

Your ayên should be lớn develop a process that your sales department can follow to encourage potential customers to lớn invest in you. To do that, we use a simple, four-step process.

This is a gentle but persistent process that your sales professionals will get better at with time and training.

Step #1: Ask the lead khổng lồ make the initial investment with you.

Step #2: Encourage them to lớn make a commitment to lớn you in some way, even if that’s just by signing up for a free trial.

Xem thêm: Bạn Nên Dùng Cốc Cốc Hay Chrome Và Cốc Cốc, Tại Sao Vẫn Nhiều Người Dùng Cốc Cốc

Step #3: Establish enough trust with them so that they’re prepared khổng lồ make an investment.

You can build trust by communicating with them and proving that they need your company’s products.

This is where sales và sale strategies can overlap, because this communication can be as simple as a piece of kinh doanh nội dung. The key here is khổng lồ underst& your target audience & to facilitate communication that adds value and builds trust in some way.

Step #4: Follow up, follow up, follow up.

Don’t risk damaging the trust that you’ve sầu worked so hard to establish, though. Don’t leave your sale qualified leads feeling as though you’re hounding them for a sale.

Instead, focus on developing a genuine connection.

Show them that your company’s products can solve sầu a problem for them or make their lives easier.

Keep Your Sales and Marketing Aligned

Now that you know the key differences between sales professionals and marketing professionals, it’s time to lớn make sure that sales & marketing align.

Think of running a business as like driving a oto. When you’re driving, you have to lớn check your mirrors, change gears & align all sorts of other different actions so that they’re all working together.

Marketing does not equal sales, but the two of them vì chưng work together.

Using your signals does not equal actually taking a turn, but they go together.

You need to lớn treat marketing and sales as two very different things that interrelate with each other. They can’t work in silos, & you need lớn develop strategies with both sales and kinh doanh in mind.

One of the best ways to lớn bring your kinh doanh department và your sales team closer together is khổng lồ use the #R3MAT method, which will help you khổng lồ understvà where each of your marketing qualified leads is in the sales funnel.

The #R3MAT method taps into one of the basic principles of digital marketing: the need to lớn reach people in the right place with the right message at the right time.

By checking every piece of nội dung that your marketing department creates against the #R3MAT method, you make sure that there’s a purpose behind everything you vì.

And while this is a powerful tool for creating sale nội dung, it’s also useful for your sales team as a kind of sanity check before they pichồng up the phone & try to Hotline someone.

Is it the right message based on where they are in the sales cycle, and is it the right time to reach out lớn them?

And are you reaching out khổng lồ them in the right place?

Would an gmail be better?

By starting to lớn think about these questions, your company can dramatically improve sầu its likelihood of building a community of customers & ultimately generate more revenue.

You also create a much more sustainable sales cycle, cut down on costs by driving efficiencies and make yourself much more profitable as a result of it.

Conclusion

Now that you know what you need to lớn know about sales vs sale, it’s over to you to lớn revisit your sales & kinh doanh strategies to make sure that you’re adhering to lớn best practices và creating full alignment between your two teams.

The good news is that it’s never too late to lớn modernize your sales department or to lớn revisit your approach lớn your marketing professionals. In fact, by spending just a month or two ensuring that your sales strategy và your sale efforts are all aligned và working towards a common goal, you can dramatically improve sầu the performance of your company while simultaneously creating happier, more loyal customers.

Understanding the differences between your sales force & your kinh doanh team is no longer something that you can afford to ignore. It’s become a default requirement for doing business, and some people are still struggling to change their thinking & to adopt these best practices.

Xem thêm: Cách Trỏ Tên Miền Về Hosting Chi Tiết Nhất 2021, Hướng Dẫn Trỏ Tên Miền Về Hosting

It can be made even more difficult for small businesses where people have khổng lồ wear multiple different hats. If you’re self-employed or if you run a small business, it’s likely that both sales and marketing fall into lớn your remit. And if anything, that makes understanding the differences và similarities even more important.

And besides, you can bet that even if you’re not focussing on sales vs sale and bringing the two of them closer together, your competitors are. If you’re not careful & if you don’t take definite steps khổng lồ keep up with them, you’re at serious risk of being left behind.

Now that you’ve heard our thoughts, we want lớn hear from you. Be sure khổng lồ reach out to us on your social networking site of choice or to leave a comment on this post lớn let us know what you see as the essential differences between sales & sale.

We’d love khổng lồ hear from you & look forward lớn keeping the conversation going! Make sure khổng lồ join our TEC below!