If Sales is the prime objective then why is it part of Marketing?
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to Sales and Marketing in business today. Sales is the end result, that’s a given and Marketing is a driver. Or is it? Some say that Sales and Marketing should feed off of each other in a never ending cycle, others say Marketing is just a tool for Sales. What about Product?
Trent Fierro, Director of Marketing at Avenda Systems says, “I’ve never worked anywhere where marketing was the primary driver. Marketing usually reported into sales, never vice versa. At Cisco the goal was to provide sales with the ammunition they needed to either start or stall a competitive opportunity, then sales had to close the deal.”
John Hibel, Director of Sales at West Interactive says, “If the goal is sales, you also need a product or service in order to achieve the goal and complete a sale. Does it then follow that product development should report to sales? The functional leaders in a business need to work together to achieve a common goal regardless of reporting structure. While there is some overlap, marketing and sales do have some distinct differences in the skillsets and priorities needed for success. You need good leadership to balance these differences– it’s easy for sales to drive marketing into a short term lead generation machine that doesn’t position the company for long term success. It’s also easy for marketing to get lost in an ivory tower of branding that does little to help sales in the short term. One of the things you’ll notice in business is there are two organizational structures: one defined by the org chart, and the other defined by how people work together to get stuff done. They rarely overlap as much as you might think.”
There is an ongoing discussion on this very topic that you can take part in and share your opinions by clicking here.
After reading many opinions and thoughts from experienced Sales and Marketing executives and others, it’s understandable why the confusions (misconceptions?) arise. In this discussion, the original question was that if Sales is the prime objective, why is it a part of Marketing, however others add the placement of Product in this mix. Can’t have Sales without the product, right?
