If they were humans, they would be cousins, or even more aptly, brothers.
Marketing and Sales are concepts have been used interchangeably for many decades. In small organizations, their functions are carried out in the same department, thereby making it difficult to appreciate the differences between them.
However, even though they are closely related, they remain two different phenomena.
Marketing involves a broad spectrum of activities which range from putting together plans and strategies that are geared towards projecting a positive image for a brand.
The goal of marketing is to communicate value to prospective customers/clients.
Marketing employs research, branding, advertising, public relations and corporate communications to tell compelling stories centered around a company and its products or services to a wide variety of people.
Sales, on the other hand drills down to target groups or individuals who are persuaded to buy a product or service.
It focuses on converting the leads that the process of marketing generates into orders and purchases.
To get a customer to buy into a brand, it is important to establish a relationship with them, as opposed to being concerned with only making a one-off sale. Sales represent the relationship driver. It deals with customers on an individual basis and takes note of behavior, likes and dislikes.
Marketing and Sales are both avenues for generating revenue, and providing a mutually beneficially relationship, only that marketing is a longer process as it involves the painstaking process of building a brand name, which is usually a long process, while sales is a much shorter process that focuses on the target customer.
Marketing provides an inroad for sales to develop a one-on-one relationship with the target customer.
The process of marketing takes into consideration factors such as; market analysis, distribution channels, pricing strategies, competing brands, market share analysis, budget, and sales tracking.
After all the planning and strategizing done by marketing to position a brand as being of utmost value to the customer, sales takes over by turning all of marketing’s “packaging” into something substantial.
Marketing is all about managing the product, price, placing and promotion. It takes the interest and needs of the buyer as paramount and creates a pull to the brand. It has a much wider dynamic compared to sales which is pretty much one-dimensional.
Sales is a part of the marketing process, and can be regarded as the result of marketing. At the end of the day, no business can survive without successfully and strategically combining these two elements to achieve the desired results.
They are interwoven, interdependent and an integral component of what makes a brand stand out.