Friday, June 05, 2009
Sales and Marketing are very different
All too often "Sales" and "Marketing" are paired even so that one person has a "Sales & Marketing" title. This often makes as much sense as pairing Finance and R&D. Peter Drucker, whom many claimed to admire, but also most ignored pointed out that Sales and Marketing were more likely to be natural adversaries than allies. After all, as he said, if Marketing were to do a perfect job, then there would be no need for sales. Yet, even though few people are good at both, the role continues to be confused to the harm of the company.
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2 comments:
It goes beyond just separating them. They need to be managed individually, with metrics appropriate for both. If you don't, how do you know if you have a sales problem, a marketing problem, or both?
Speaking as an ignorant man in the street, I thought that Marketing existed to persuade people to buy, and Sales existed to take their money and give them their products after they've decided to buy.
If that's a correct picture, then you can dispense with Marketing if you get really good word-of-mouth publicity, but you can never dispense with Sales. Though you can automate some of it by selling on the Web.
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