Sales vs Marketing

Marketing and Sales have always been in a debate about who is more important, who gets the glory and contributes more to the success of a company. Having been on both sides I can clearly see where the discussion gets hot and how each of the sides sees the other.

The approach

Marketers are trying to tell a story, where sales people focus on asking questions. A marketer is interested in presenting a captivating campaign. They talk about the customer testimonials, focus on the happy and attractive side of the product. The sales people have one goal in mind — how to turn the right buttons of this individual to make them exchange money.

Whereas marketers often work with the most satisfied customers, collecting stories for a blog or social media post, sales people see the good, the bad and the ugly. All complains, objections, the pure craziness of people — they must deal with all of this. At some point, you might find yourself spending 90% of your time talking to the unhappy people, trying to fix things and only 10% with the happy ones. Marketing is saved from this honor.

Pull vs Push

Marketing’s goal is to pull people towards the business. Using attractive ads, smart targeting, telling interesting stories, marketers search ways to provoke interest and reaction. Sales people must push once there is the slightest interest. Even by personality a sales job converts people in more outgoing, approaching and even a bit stubborn. This is why communication between marketing and sales can sometimes be very difficult.

Art vs Science

Some say that marketing is art and sales is science, but I think it is the opposite. Marketing is demanding more and more analytics skills and precision. Digital marketing channels like Google and Facebook ads allow very precise tracking of data, which is why marketers of today must be excellent analysts. They spend most of their time working on Excel, Google Analytics and CRM data to identify trends and measure success. There is a creative part of marketing, but a lot of it gets outsourced to professional designers, editors and writers. The real marketers are using more and more data to take strategic decisions even on the creative side.

Sales on the other hand is a performance art. Every call places you are on a stage with a new audience and you must adjust your act to have a successful performance. I do not want to say in any way that sales people lie, but their profession involves a lot of the skill of an actor. This means sensing the audience, feeling even the subtlest reactions, presenting and adjusting your voice and words to appeal to the customer.

Immediate vs Long-term

Sales people want things done NOW, meaning yesterday. They demand speed, because they are used to it. Their world is dynamic and adaptable to change. Their success depends on the level of action they take — the more they call, the more people they meet, the more messages they send, the more sales they are likely to get. The problem is that to a man with a hammer the world is a nail. When sales people approach a marketing problem they tend to have one answer — just do more of it!

This does not correspond well with the way marketing works. Short-term oriented marketing campaigns are not likely to be that successful. Tell a marketer you need 100% more leads this weekend, they cannot to help you. For a great marketing campaign, you need patience. It involves coming with the right message, identifying the channels, timing and frequency. Once all these factors are fine-tuned, one successful marketing execution can save a whole sales cycle. If you focus on getting leads this week without strategy, you are likely to achieve nothing.

Generating vs Converting

The role of marketing in the cycle is to generate the leads. This involves getting people to call the business, request information, fill out a form, write an email. The next stages of the cycle depend on the sales team. Marketing only can only get you that far. Sales must get these people in whom marketing sparked some interest with their campaign to act.

Sometimes sales people come with the argument that marketing is not doing a good job in converting the leads in paying customers. They would blame the leads they get for not being interested, not enough qualified, but this falls in the sales people’s responsibility. Getting people excited and qualified to buy the product is much more of a sales job, than marketing. A marketer can only get a prospect to a certain level of interest. To drive an immediate action, there is a necessity of a sales person work.

Conclusion
No matter your role Marketer or Sales you are the blood of the company for now. But, in the near future I believe the Sales roles will become less and less needed. With technology like AI and AR being implemented into corporations the automated processes and "funnels" will be able to take people right to the sale. Where I see Marketing will always need innovated people running the campaigns coming up with stories, original ideas and making sure the leads and workflow of the funnel is running smoothly. Time will tell but if we are selling off of a looped webinar now just imagine the future.

Written by Rett Sloat 9/30/2019