Marketing and sales: we often hear them mentioned in the same breath – but what are they really, and how do they work together? Don’t worry! I’m going to tell you how each one works and how they couple to make a powerhouse business!
Marketing
At the very foundation, marketing is all of the actions done to acquire prospects, gain potential customers, and basically tell the world about your company. This can be made up of email marketing, content marketing, social media, ad campaigns, direct mail, etc. These various strategies are measured using analytics to ensure you are reaching the maximum potential of prospects in each various avenue. The people, or prospects, that you attain during the marketing process are often called ‘cold leads’ – or those who you can woo via your sales process into a ‘warm lead’/client.
Sales
If marketing is the beginning of the journey to acquiring a client, then sales is the next step. The sales process can be made up of one-on-one meetings, networking, cold calls, etc. At a basic level, it is everything that you do to close the deal with a prospective client (that you most likely obtained via your marketing campaign). Sales allows you to connect on a personal level with your leads and obtain a signed contract or agreement.
The Difference
The most simple way to think about the two is as the two starting steps in the journey to attaining a client. If the first step is done correctly then the prospect shifts from a cold lead to a warm lead, which makes the sales process much easier. Without marketing you would not build rapport with your prospects and earn the ability to sell them on your product or service. On the flip side, without sales you would have a whole lot of prospects and no legitimate clients.
The Key
As you may have noticed – marketing a sales are very closely paired. Without one, you cannot have the other and vice versa. It really is a cycle that connects the business to a prospect and transforms them into a client. Consider the cycle as transforming a cold lead, to a warm lead, and finally a hot lead when the sale is closed. These two steps work in sequence to build a rapport, and earn the trust of your customers on a personal level.
Integration
Are you unsure how to marry your sales and marketing team, or your processes?
First of all, determine what stage of the process your prospects are (cold, warm, hot). Now, you can see which ones need sales, which ones need marketing, and which are already sales and can be moved into the customer service division. In order to grow your business, or even just to maintain what you have built – you need to have both a sales team and a marketing team and the strategies for both need to be cohesive. In the next post – we will show you how to tackle each stage of your marketing/sales prospects and successfully move them from one stage of the journey to the next. We will also discuss techniques to use if you’re uncomfortable with either the sales or marketing processes.
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