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Quick question – What's the difference between sales and marketing?

It’s not the same thing!

Marketing is spreading the good word about your product. Its product awareness, and brand exposure. Marketing is anything, everything, that you do to bring a prospect in, and sales is what you do when you are face-to-face or over any medium like mail, call.

Before you read this..

Here's a blog detailing the sales side of marketing. Did you know, The cost of hiring as sales team, often takes 175% of the marketing budget? Good Marketing helps you convert faster, and lessens time on your sales pipelines. Read on ⟶

Most sales agents find closing the sale hard, and startups spend their extra time, money, efforts & their full steam in sales funnels to convert every prospect into a client. And, this is typical of sales & something what we all do! But this begs the question, why is sales so hard? Why should convincing the client be tough?

You might assume you know your client better. But do you really know what he wants? Its not a question of assumption, but communication matters. Give your customers benefits, not features. Your customers might not want to know the ins and outs of your products immediately, but they might perhaps only want to know how it benefits them! Yes?

Save the details of the product for a secondary sales pitch that's NOT on your main call. You can give some main selling points, but keep the minor details off first pitch. List the core benefits. For example, let's say the market is finance, and you've got a strategy to get your clients out of debt via a funnel optimized for smaller set of leads, it's not necessary to detail a step-by-step work-flow on "how" stuff works with your lead generation.

It's okay to be vague about how you make your dish, over handing your recipe to any client. Leave in the small print for how you focus on converting the leads. Tell clients how they can live a life being debt free. Focus more on benefit, not necessarily on features.

When you meet someone you don't know, they jumped on you and say, "Let me sell you some stuff". You obviously reject them. Your emotions are pressured, and privacy is often violated. But, what really matters in sales is deriving organic experiences, when a prospect approaches via a referral, your website, posts you've curated on your blog, or from a trusted friend.

Ideally the prospect calls up, and most likely not concerned on the price, but says "I want to do business with you." These attributes make him an organic consumer, who very well researched what you are selling, and much aware about your products/services. And with such prospects, you will be able to close any sales very quickly, without a whole lot of sell – An already convinced audience!

When your marketing is good, there is less sales you have to do. But what is marketing? It's a mix of whole bunch of things - Positioning, branding, your message, social proof, your reputation, and a lot of these help you with selling better. The better your marketing is, easier for you to close the sale. The harder you have to do your convincing, the harder you have to sell.

How your company is positioned, your branding, your social proof, your testimonials matters a lot. Consider these 2 testimonials -- #1: "The company did a good job saving us money", #2: "From 1% to 20% conversion, the firm as improved our dunning rates. Highly recommended."

As you read these 2 testimonials, there's a big difference between a feel good testimonial to a highly-recommended one! The better you set it up, before you do the sales conversation, easier it is for sales. Most sales representatives try hitting the leads, and sell, sell, sell, and sell.

That's the problem, and then the more you want to sell, the harder you have to work, and more prospects resist what you do. Focus on marketing, and it takes away half your pain.

Keep calm and sell on!