Sales & Marketing Realistic Strategic Synergies
Sales & Marketing are separate departments with clearly different responsibilities. It is critical that they respect each other’s role to turn the strategies into measurable & successful performance.
Sales and marketing planning are key elements when building any company. These departments are the life blood of an organization, as they are the key drivers of the company’s revenues. The inadequacy of a solid sales or marketing plan is typically the predominant reason a business fails. This is because any shortcomings here will result in revenues and profitability falling short of business requirements. Understanding the essential roles of these departments is pivotal to overall business success.
The first fundamental truth that must be understood about sales and marketing is that these are two entirely separate apparatuses, and they must be treated as such. Too many chief executives and senior managers attempt to merge these functions into a single department with shared guidelines and principles, particularly in start-ups. However, this is a decision that can hinder the overall well-being of the organization as each bureau functions best in a particular setting with precise methodologies.
Sales
Let’s begin with sales. A sale is typically a human driven practice. A company’s sales representative introduces your company to prospective customers. These representatives can either be inside salespeople, residing in a corporate headquarters or branch office, or outside salespeople, traveling to meet with individual clients.
The sales process is about delivering a customized company message that suits the needs of the particular client or service. The sales representative, based on their initial impressions of the potential customer, has the ability to fine-tune the points of interest and the priority of sales’ features.
What drives the ultimate success of your sales plan is the quality of the salespeople. This is based in terms of their training, skill base, and their industry connections. Therefore, hiring the right salespeople with the right relationships will make or break your sales efforts. This may make it critical to make sure these people are appropriately incentivized with a meaningful commission plan for closing sales and reaching their targets.
Marketing
Marketing is typically a media driven practice. An advertisement or other form of communication is developed as a tool to introduce your company to prospective customers. Marketing can be driven via multiple channels; these include: the internet, social media, word of mouth, print, television, radio, video, billboards, events, direct mail and any other efficient outlet.
Unlike the salesmen’s approach to generating revenue, a marketer must be adept at crafting a product or service message that can resonate with a significant number of potential customers. The marketer must attempt to create a clear and simple message that is attractive and positively viewed by not just a single individual, but by an entire target base. This requires an understanding of the target audience’s habits, mannerisms, preferences, and priorities. While the salesman must be quick on his feet to comfortably manage the ebbs and flows of single conversations, a marketer must take his/her time to properly understand what the target audience desires and how a broad scope message can leave a lasting positive impression on this group.
The ultimate success of an organization’s marketing plan is a shrewd marketing team that has properly studied your prospective customer; this entails the undertaking of demographics research and targets, and placed the appropriate marketing messages in front of the appropriate media outlets where these customers will be looking. So, hiring the right marketing team with proven experience working within your industry and desired budgets will make or break your efforts here.
The Difference
While separated by their tactics, both sales and marketing must make an effort to align their approaches for the betterment of each other and the organization at-large. Communication
channels must continuously be active between these bureaus, passing on their newly gained business intelligence and the latest trends from their individual department’s efforts. Through
these exchanges, realistic strategies can be developed and deployed with the higher probability of measurable business performance.
