A Marketing Guru says “Sales is short term whereas Marketing is long term".
A Senior manager of one of the leading FMCG MNC says" Strategy is sexy but Execution is what matters".
SALES is the Only Driver. Unless you sell and receive $$$, all that you shout about is useless .Sales is what pays for every activity. Every great inventor has to SELL his/her inventions before people started seeing them as requirement. Sales keep the ball rolling.....Sales is the only function that generates revenue for the organization. If revenues are important to sustain your business then Sales takes precedence as it brings the money to keep you afloat.
Sales is far more impacting and fruitful for organizations. Marketing can only complement by giving a face to the efforts of the sales department but yes I really believe and practice that "Strategy is a commodity and Execution is an art"
Sales was never part of Marketing although I agree that they are closely linked and it is sometimes difficult to decide whether it's operational marketing or straight sales.Let me put it this way, companies can exist without marketing departments (often this is the first thing that goes in a budget cut because the ROI is difficult to prove) but they cannot exist without sales.
MARKETING helps in bringing more money in a short period of time, as the brand sells easier. If you have enough money to invest without the pressure to generate revenues to sustain yourself.... then marketing can take precedence as it helps in building your brand & message. Sales is section of Marketing. Marketing generates attention + interest. Sales makes it tailor-made and gets the necessary conformation (Closing). The Better Marketing, The easier the sale. When you think "is it easy to make a sale of a BRAND or NO BRAND?"
Sales can be expensive compared to Marketing! Today how many customers can you visit a day and how can you convince them if your product never existed before
When you market the product, you're making people think about how they would feel with that product in their possession.As an example, I want to say that the sale iPods would not be a success today if they weren't advertised. Marketing plays a large role in helping the consumer organizing their needs and wants for their personal level of satisfaction.
Marketing is only king if your delivering a mass retail product like an ipod. Because lets face it most sales advisors are not that greatest and that product needs to be taken to market. However who is going to negotiate the longtime product placement of these fantastic items.”Sales Person”
Marketing is the key to almost every sale when you are new in the market. Unless you market your self/brand, people will not know about it. You will have customers buying your product/services by getting referred to you from previous clients after you have made a good sale but to get those initial clients in the door so you can make the SALE will require some marketing.
Sales & Marketing
Sales people rely on the marketing plan to help their territory strategy, and Marketing should rely on sales to provide honest feedback on the real conditions in the market that "market research" can't provide.
Both are equally difficult and present their own challenges. Though not everyone is cut out to do both, I think the departments should cross-train. A good marketer can't devise a plan without having been in front of customers in a real selling situation, and good sales persons should be able to understand the rationale behind the marketing plan.
The question is sort of like asking 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?' I think there are three things to consider when looking at building one's business: Image, Brand and Reputation. If you look at the recent dealings with Tiger Woods as of late, you can see how almost his personal image, brand overnight and reputation has been tarnished. Can an ad fix that? Can someone sell us the right story to fix that? My answer would be - not likely. Right now someone is using twitter to share their thoughts on the situation, someone is writing it on their face book page; in fact, I'm even bringing it up on Blog.
Fundamentally, advertisers will say marketing is king, and the sales department will say sales is king.
So, what do I think is most important?
Well, here they are: Quality of product, availability of product, ease of doing business with you, friendliness and helpfulness of sales and service people, enjoyment of product and then the continuous improvement in each of the five areas listed above. Without those elements in the product or the service offering then the marketing department simply brings awareness of a low quality product or service. As for the sales side of things, the sales department can't work miracles by getting people to see past the flaws of the product .
As a side note, I firmly believe that word of mouth advertising (both in terms of friends and the impact of other's opinions on the internet) has much more impact then traditional advertising or 'Madmen', although I believe marketing serves a purpose of bringing awareness of something new, but even that has its challenges.
If you ask sales, they will surely say sales and if you ask marketing, they will surely say marketing. Sales and marketing absolutely go hand in hand. It's NOT an and/or situation. It must be AND. Each has a role in generating value and independently each is weaker. Anyone who actually thinks there is an answer to this question simply does not understand what either does.
Both are important... however it is the stage at which you/your organization is decides which one takes precedence.
“In today's customer driven markets, the roles of sales and marketing have changed so much that they are not as separated as they used to be. Marketing used to take the lead in defining a product, sales would take the leads form the product or service launch and find customers for the product.Sales can never exist without Marketing and Marketing without Sales.
