So What's More Important In Business, Sales or Marketing?
By Adele Crane
There is always discussion over whether the key to any organisation’s growth is Sales or Marketing. Is it the salespeople who are signing deals or the marketing team that are creating the awareness and potentially leads?
There is in fact a place for both, but that place is defined by customers and the industry you are in and by the complexity of your products. Where the consumer or domestic market is your target audience, and you have little contact time to educate them in your product, then certainly the need for marketing is the lead process for growth. Your target is a mass audience with multiple-point purchasing, so marketing is the only real way to reach those people.
Where your target audience is corporate or small businesses with a high technology product that requires education, then there is a lower requirement on marketing and a higher degree of emphasis on sales personnel.
"At no point does either Sales or Marketing become redundant in the process; the relative emphasis is defined purely by target audience behaviour and finding the right balance."
From an organisational perspective you have to be very clear about your target audience and the volume of targets you wish to reach. Every target has a cost and potential value. Quite often we see emerging businesses direct enormous sums of money towards their target audience with little return being achieved. This can be regardless of whether the target is a domestic or a business audience. Businesses have not explored the market sufficiently nor followed the tried and true practices of identification, testing then launching; a simple process that is so often just disregarded through enthusiasm or a little arrogance that you know the market.
For sales people, we also often see them go to market, unprepared, unfocused and not following the basic steps of the sales process. They are trying to close unqualified leads and doing presentations to people on subjects they are not interested in. They also have not explored the market sufficiently and followed the tried and true practices of consultative selling. Again, the simple process not being followed which is detrimental to the overall results.
Getting the balance of how much effort should be committed towards marketing and how much sales effort is required is the key. To know when marketing must step aside and let sales take over and at what critical step in the customer’s process that occurs will be paramount to success. Marketing needs to ensure they develop the right customer awareness and sales needs to ensure they close those opportunities.
Like sales, marketing is often seen as a mystical art form, with results changing on a day-to-day basis, dependant on extraneous factors ranging from other advertisements on the day through to whether the moon and stars were lined up.
On reviewing sales and marketing processes within organisations I often quietly ponder, who can spin more lines – the sales force or the marketing department? Both have a plethora of lines and stories that can be convincing to the uninitiated, frustrating to the majority and a little amusing to the over-initiated – just before both departments are called to task.
Both the sales and the marketing departments have grown from very similar beginnings and certainly have caused directors equal amounts of anxiety over the years. Marketing have been renowned for the ‘advertising pitch’: an ability to create passion for the product with a significant price ticket attached for the service. Rarely would you see a presentation that talks about expected return on investment. Sales have been renowned for the ‘funnel or pipeline report’: an ability to create a false sense of security regarding the level of potential business that will be signed. Both end in disappointment, frustration and certainly a diminishing level of respect as the goal posts are shifted throughout each conversation.
For both sales and marketing, times have changed and the art–science debate is a thing of the past Selling Function. Organisations will not, and should not, be expected to tolerate an inadequacy of performance in either business units.
Each area of the business can be and must be measured effectively to ensure maximum efficiencies are achieved and there is no cross over of costs or gaps where potential opportunity is slipping through.
In the book "Improving Sales Force Efficiencies";, we provide you with valuable insights into many of the fundamental barriers that organisations place in front of themselves that stop potential growth in the future. It also highlights how the sales and marketing departments must be attuned to remove internal barriers that will stop growth and the need for measurement on multiple levels.
“Improving Sales Force Efficiencies” is available through www.amazon.com in Europe and USA or directly with Sales Focus International www.salesfocusintl.com
Adele Crane is world renowned business consultant with over two decades of experience in cultural change and delivering growth. She has an outstanding ability in the diagnosis of business and individuals that contribute to change. Her clients span over many countries where she has effectively delivered change. Her ability to deliver significant change and results in 90-120 days is unprecedented combined with increases above 25% in growth during that period of time. Through her consulting business, organisations have access to that methodology directly or through partners.
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