What’s the Connection Between Sales and Marketing?
You’ve probably wondered whether sales and marketing are somehow connected with each other. In case you didn’t know, marketing is defined as a large number of activities whose goal is to produce leads, while sales imply turning an ordinary individual into a buyer, and doing whatever is possible to make him become a faithful customer. Every company has a sales department and a marketing one, and both of them depend on each other, being strongly connected by leads.
Linking leads work in two different ways, as the marketing department advertises and generates revenue which needs to be maximized by the sales department. However, leads should definitely be produced, and this is one of the reasons why marketing seems to overpower sales.
Believe it or not, marketing comes under various forms, all of them being famous all over the world. They can include cold canvassing, brand and corporate advertising, and even very targeted marketing strategies such as direct response advertising (the client is basically explained the benefits of a specific product). When applied accordingly, these strategies provide great results, as potential clients generally ask for more details about the advertised item. Leads are of the utmost importance for sales people, as they allow them to communicate with the client and make sure that he/she turns into a faithful customer.
Marketing-sales cooperation can bring you a lot of benefits, and the best way of getting familiar with them is by reading the following lines. The tips explained below will allow you to promote your company and boost your sales without jeopardizing revenue.
Why should marketing and sales work together?
The combination between sales and marketing workforce is crucial, especially if you want to strengthen or even get rid of unpleasant budgetary issues. If your team comprises marketers and sales representatives your products/services will definitely manage to attract a large number of new customers. The main goal of the team is to make sure that people are interested in what the company offers and that their words are enough to prevent the client from leaving without purchasing a product. That being said, it becomes clear that both departments need to work together. Besides, they should do their best to create a budget plan that’s good enough to organize both the marketing and sales processes as if they were one.
How do sales and marketing change radically?
First of all, the marketing process along with its initial research phase, increase their effectiveness. If you use customer surveys, market segmentation analyses, as well as competitor analyses, your sales and marketing team will be able to use all the information in order to establish a serious process. For instance, the marketers can obtain access to the researched data in no time, while the sales department will be able to come up with a clear picture of how the products are perceived by their clients so that they can start fighting for more leads.
When you combine a sales team with a marketing team, their goal becomes that of keeping the customers satisfied. Marketers do whatever they can to attract as many customers as possible, while sales people do their best to advertise the quality of the company’s products even on the street. However, this means that both teams will have to be rewarded for their work by the managers.
Whether we want to admit it or not, sales cannot survive without marketing, and vice-versa. They’re intrinsically dependent and linked to each other. Before the Google era, B2B campaigns relied on brochures and ads that had to be delivered by sales people and not servers, emails, and copiers. As a consequence, big companies such as Canon, Xerox, and IBM managed to build massive sales campaigns to succeed. Salespeople were the ones to engage customers to buy, while marketing had to provide the tools.
There’s no doubt that times have changed, and for a lot of companies sales people are no longer the ones to initiate the customer relationship. This is now the job of a website, which is just a small part in the managing and forming process of a cohesive customer relationship.
Over the years, both marketing and sales have evolved into separate business functions and units inside a company. Nevertheless, they can’t survive separately. Can you imagine McDonald’s making so much money without powerful marketing campaigns? Of course not; to drive revenue and boost sales, the population must be engaged and assured that a certain product is worth buying. The best way to do that is through a powerful marketing campaign.
Online marketing & sales
You cannot talk about sales and marketing without taking into account both the effects and the importance of what is currently known as online marketing models. Most marketers live their lives on the internet, and they’re willing to do their best to entice customers. Thanks to their determination, the marketing process turns into a very effective one, and produces also an increase in sales.
All in all, the marketing department and the sales one are tightly connected. A good business man should learn how to use both of them, since their main goal is to become recognized internationally and to boost revenue. A marketing team is designed to raise awareness and advertise, while the sales department does its best to sell the product to the client. This solution is a two-way one, and it’s effective only if the two domains are not competing with each other.
