Are you struggling to scale your product/services? or are you failing to market your product/services?
In this article, we are going to see about sales and marketing tips and techniques that help you to win more customers.
Before going to the main topic, first I want to clear your perception about sales and marketing.
What is sales?
The simple and basic definition of sales is the activity of selling goods and services in exchange for money.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is the process that promotes the buying or selling of the product.
Difference between sales and marketing
1. Marketing team generate leads and the sales team convert those leads into buying customer
2. Marketing spread the brand message in the form of content (content can be text, picture, and video) whereas sales build relationships with potential clients
3. Marketing creates brand awareness and sales create brand relations
4. Marketing educates the potential customers about products and services whereas sales create revenue by selling these products and services
Relation between sales and marketing
We have seen differences between both things still both team depends on each other. We’ll see about the relation between them
1. Both team works for the same business goal
2. If we don’t market the product then the sales team will be in the struggle for selling that product
3. Salespeople directly work with the potential client so they have a fair idea about what customer
exactly need and this thing helps in preparing a marketing strategy
4. Brand awareness is created by marketing and which help salespeople to make the sales process smoother
5. Salespeople have to handle the objection of the clients and these objections used by marketers to create content.
When to have a sales and marketing team.
To understand this better I’ll divide businesses into 4 categories and with the help of this, we’ll see when to have a sales and marketing team.
1. Low-End B2C Products
A product like toothpaste, chocolate, pens comes under this category. The price of these products is very low and the sales decision is very easy to buy these kinds
of things so in this category we do not need a separate sales team. But in this category, we need marketing to create brand awareness about the product. For eg.
If you are in India and I ask you about the Toothpaste brand and you will reply with Colegate, Pepsodent, or Closeup because of their branding
2. Hing-End B2C Products
Products like Car, Real Estate comes under this category in which the product is a direct sale to the customer but the pricing of the product is much higher and the sales decision is complex in this category.
For this category, you will need both sales and marketing teams. The marketing team will generate leads for you and the sales team will convert this into a customer for you.
3. Low-End B2B Products
The products like IT service provider agency, Wholesaler and suppliers come under this. This category also needs both the team but sales efforts required more than marketing efforts for this category. The pricing of these products is lower than High-End B2B products but can be similar to Low-End B2C products.
For eg., An IT service agency that helps other businesses needs lead generation as a part of marketing and for coveting them into customers they need a sales team as well.
4. High-End B2B Products
The pricing of this category product is much higher than all other categories so that the buying decision is more complex and the sales efforts required to close the deal is also much higher than the other 3 categories.
For eg. Companies like TCS, Infosys, L&T come under this category and they do not market themselves for sales. they just contact the decision-making authority of their potential client and close the deal. Government road contract is one of the examples for this category, In which companies like L&T directly deal with the government. From the above examples, we can say that the marketing team efforts require for this category are lesser.
From the above points, I am sure that now you have understood when to have a sales and marketing team in the business.
Sales and marketing techniques that win customers
1. Sales and Marketing team in any business directly reflects the return on investments (ROI) and other departments do not show direct return or profits. So it is
very important to allocate proper budget to these departments. Many business owners/founders don’t have the proper budget for the two.
2. Align both sales and marketing teams under one roof. When marketers prepare the marketing strategy then the salesperson should be a part of it for understanding what type of content we are spreading for the products/services that we have to sell.
3. Sometimes in a month marketers should go with the salespersons to visit clients to understand filed level challenges and objections.
4. Marketers prepare the marketing strategy by doing market research but the salesperson is one who directly has to meet clients and handles his/her objections.
So it will be better for the business to allow salespeople to be part of marketing strategy preparation.
5. Marketing generated leads but salesperson one who contact them and they can analyze the quality of leads. If a salesperson works with a marketing person then they will help each other to generate high-quality leads and it will ultimately generate high sales.
6. Competitor’s research is done by the marketing team and if they share this data with the sales team then salespeople can take advantage of this while selling and it will make the selling process smoother.
7. Regular meetings between both the teams make both processes and activities easier for both of them and it will be ultimately beneficial for the businesses.
This is all about the Sales and Marketing that you should learn about before joining any one of the departments to make you and your organization profitable.
I hope you have got a lot of value and clarity about sales and marketing from this article. Do let me know your thoughts and view them in the comment section below.
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