Sales and Marketing - is it the same bakwas!!

More often than not we confuse marketing and sales to be the same thing. No points to guess that they are not. Let me put my 2 cents on it. 

Marketing refers to a much broader area and encompasses all the aspects about the market of a particular product or market. It starts right from the stage we conceive the product and ends .. well  never ends until the product is there in the market. 

There are two ways of doing business , think of a product and then about the market ; think of the market and then about the product. Mostly the second paradigm is seen in the business world. However, the genius products such as that of apple and the research labs follow the product first and think that the market will follow. Infact for some time even the genius google did not know how to make profit from their search engine. They just knew that they had a product which rocks , of course technically. 

Hence, marketing in most businesses starts while the product is still at the sperm stage. The study of the market, its economic , cultural , demographic minutes elucidates its need, the market need. Market need forms the embryo which when hit with the right product idea leads to giants such as Nirma , Colgate, Complan, denim and so on and so forth. 

During the product formative years, close touch with the peer products in line and the behavior of the market is as necessary as the quality of the product being built. This continuous eye of the market is very much also in marketing. Now is the stage when the product is almost ready at least fully functional when again the need to look at the market and build a strategy around the market to position the product in the best way is felt. Positioning the product includes advertising , building up a motivated sales force and managing the delivery lines and most importantly making the customer feel that this is the best suited for his needs. If the customers don’t feel the need , make them feel the heat ; “ Mard hoke ladkiyon wali cream” is a good example. 

Now when you have created or in the process of creating a market for yourself, you need the basic of all things to make your business sustain ; profits and those come from sales. Find the customer and Sell the product whatsoever. Spend on sponsorships , spend on advertisement; on promotional campaigns , make sure you are noticed. In sales , you don’t bother about the quality of your product , but on the quantity you sell. A maruti sales dealer when sells his car to me, each and every moment of his time counts; the customer is secondary here. However in marketing world, the customer matters. The feedback form the manager asks you though , is going to be a part of the marketing circle. 

Thus Marketing is the big picture, Sales is a big part of it. I would say , consider Marketing to be a human body and Sales to be the hands…

Regards,

Amrit