Business Concept 4: Sales Vs. Marketing

Many people cannot distinguish the difference between sales and marketing. We all know that the economy is about supply and demand. So in a nutshell,

Sales is about creating supply, and
Marketing is about creating demand.

In the context of war, the sales team is like army soldiers. They fight in the battlefield and their success depends on their fighting skills. The more skillful they are at their combat ability, the more opponents they can kill. The marketing team is like the army general. He plans the battles, chooses the battlefield, looks at weather conditions, research new weapons, and finds the most effective way to counter the opponent. His skill sets are different from the army soldiers, but his decisions will affect the soldiers. Even when the soldiers are outnumbered or less skilled than their opponents, strategic decisions made by the army general such as fighting in a downwind or downslope direction can make or break the battle.

A great example to illustrate sales and marketing is the (hypothetical) story of the shoe salesman of Africa: There was this shoe company who sent a salesman to an African village to sell their shoes. After spending one month at the village, he came back to the office and told his boss, " I've tried my best, sir. These tribal people are used to being bare-footed. They don't even need shoes to walk on the hot sun baked ground. There just isn't a market for these shoes". Unable to accept this excuse, the boss fired this salesman and sent another one on the same assignment. The second salesman came back one month later with the same excuse. The boss fired the 2nd salesman and sent a 3rd. Half a month later, the 3rd salesman came back to the office and told the boss, " there are 200 people in this village so I'll need 400 pairs of shoes to sell this month. Oh ya, and also pack me 3 boxes of broken glass"

The difference between the 3rd salesman and the 2 before him is his ability to create demand. Some might not agree that sprinkling broken glass just to make a sale is ethical (and I'm not saying it is), but that is not the point of the story. The story above shows that creating supply by sales skills alone is not enough is some cases. Even if there is no demand for the product initially, demand can be created; and this job of creating demand belongs to the marketing team. Sadly, marketing is not widely practiced for a few reasons:

• lack of knowledge and expertise in the marketing field
• lack of budget for marketing programmes

I do not need to elaborate on sales skills because it's quite self explanatory. Most companies only spend money to hire the best salesman that can push their products but think of the marketing team as an expense with no clear return on investment. Business works well when there are push and pull strategies akin to yin and yang. Sales is a push strategy and Marketing is a pull strategy. Understanding the difference will give you an edge in your business because once you start asking yourself "how do I create demand for my products / services" you will have a different viewpoint on the way business is conducted similar to the shoe salesman in the story above.

Let's make up a scenario for an example: You have a new brand of fishing rod to sell to the market. Most businesses would get a salesman to drive around town for all shops that sell fishing equipment and try to convince the boss of that business to try out your new product. This is a straightforward sales strategy (without marketing), and needless to say, you can imagine the results of this plan - Unpredictable, and basically praying for good results

How about this as a different approach: Before I even approach a fishing equipment retailer, I approach the local fishing association and ask if I can take up an advertisement in their monthly flyer / newsletter. I would prepare an advertisement complete with testimonials from satisfied users from overseas. Before they publish the advertisement, I would send out my salesmen to all fishing equipment retailers (where most would happen to be members of the fishing association) and tell them that I would insert their business in the advertisement as so interested buyers who see the advertisement could contact them to buy my product. Wouldn't you agree that this would make it easier for the salesman to push the product because you have in a way created demand on behalf of the retailer? This is an example of how an army general (marketing team) can create an advantage for the soldiers (salesmen) on the battlefield (market) just by applying marketing intelligence (push and pull strategies working together). This example also illustrates how thinking of helping others make money first, will help you make money down the line as discussed in my earlier article, Helping Others Make Money First.