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Marketing vs. Sales

sales coach Sep 16, 2020
 

What is the difference between Marketing and Sales?

Both are about increasing revenue. Unfortunately, most sales professionals confuse how they approach their daily tasks.  “Selling” Is all about the bottom line and is about converting a prospect into a client by obtaining a contract or collecting a credit card number (exchanging “something” for money). “Marketing” is about getting a product known.  

I have received the exact same marketing piece in the mail from “Hello Fresh” five times.  I’m aware that they deliver food and I have heard good things.  Their Marketing is good.  But Marketing is not Sales.  In most cases, usually less than 10% of the time, a prospect like me, would actually pick up the phone or go to their website and sign up for their service.

“Sales” would be the company, Hello Fresh, actually “calling on the telephone” to sign me up.  Marketing usually leads to Leads, that’s people interested in their product, and when a sales person does not follow up (usually 50% of sales people don’t) there then is a gap between the effectiveness of Marketing  and Sales..  The gap between a lead and purchase is …. (drumroll please) … SALES!  Yes, a sales person, if well trained will follow-up with that lead, until they buy!!! Have you ever said to a sales person, “I’m not interested?”  And then found yourself actually “interested” a week or month or six months or even a year later? But then, you couldn’t find the sales persons phone number?

Marketing can be extremely effective if it’s done correctly, especially when you establish your brand.  The trouble comes when a sales person thinks they are selling and marketing by sending follow-up emails or networking and setting up appointments only to be pitched by their “hopeful” prospects selling them on “their” product or services.

It’s time to learn how to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell yourself.  If you change your marketing piece every other week and hope that more people on Facebook will then suddenly call you for your services, stop wasting your money.

A professional Sales person is defined as someone that sells someone over their current belief that they don’t need, want or can afford your products or services.
A professional Order Taker is defined as someone facilitating a sale that would have occurred anyway.

I’m not a believer in motivation, but modeling 

Success leaves clues and if you start to study the most successful people in your industry you will start to see how results are not usually created by accident.  I really enjoy interviewing successful people. I’ve made a living doing it and there are patterns to success and to failure.  You must be intentional in your efforts to grow, and it’s not always by who has the most followers online, I know plenty of coaches that have 50k + follower and work part time at a furniture store.  You don’t need business cards, a fancy folder or a three-fold marketing piece to make lots of money. What you do need is a few marketing pieces that enhance your live in-person presence and you need the ability to get people to sign on the dotted line.  Beware of gimmicks like “the magic email” that encourages you, the sales person to send an email to threaten business because you might feel disrespected that a prospect hasn’t returned your call.  All that does is push the prospect further away and puts the sales person in a position to get a no.  If you set your mindset that “eventually everybody buys” you won’t get upset when they don’t buy when you need a commission.  The key is to never burn and bridge and be there when you can convince them that your product or service is better than their excuses.

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