Blue Spur

The Relationship Between Selling and Marketing

A recent article appeared in the Baltimore Business Journal asking "Are you selling or just marketing?" In the article, Matt Neuberger noted some important aspects that a salesperson should engage in such as becoming "more personalized and should be designed to understand a client or prospect." Selling he noted "involves real buy-in." He then goes on to note marketing tasks that really aren't part of sales, but which many salespeople spend their time doing, such as

What Do You Believe In?

Okay, you have a brand. It's a brand that provides value to customers in the form of quality products. It's a brand you've spend umpteen thousands of dollars advertising and building. And yet consumers want to know something else about your brand.

Your Untapped Viral Marketing Power Tool

Many companies think of marketing communications as mere advertising, mass, direct, or otherwise. Public relations seems to also be a well-tapped channel among larger companies. Marketing communication, however, reaches way beyond the confines of advertising and public relations. Companies need to look at and engage all the communications avenues open to them, even ones currently buried in the back corner of engineering.

Don't fail to engage the power of great documentation in garning loyalty and feeding viral marketing.

The Dangers of Competition Between Sales and Marketing

I recently ran into an interesting situation. A business owner learned that his marketing managers had extensive sales experience – always a good thing in a marketing manager. He put his brain to work on this little tidbit and figured that if his marketing people were selling along side his salespeople, he could increase sales without increasing overhead. This guy saw himself as someone who thought outside the box, a real problem solver. Unfortunately, he practiced seagull management, where rather than working in the business, he flew in every couple of weeks, crapped all over everything and flew out. He told his marketing people to spend 50% of their time selling, he gave them a commission structure to motivate them, and threw on a sales quota to cover accountability. (oh yes, it was a sales quota above and beyond what anyone in the company had ever accomplished, based on the 400% increase he hoped would magically take place.)

Relationship & Price

"I lowered the price to get them in the door. I knew that once they saw the value of our service and we could build a relationship, they would be a good repeat customer."

That's an actual quote from a salesperson I worked with. He was forever selling low-margin deals (a.k.a. unprofitable deals) with the big plan of making it up on volume.