What Is Sales?
Sales is the process of convincing a consumer to purchase goods or services. At a business, the sales process typically involves salespeople contacting leads who fit the customer profile of their target market (often it’s the marketing department who first identifies these leads). The salesperson then tries to persuade the lead to make a purchase by pointing out a problem that the salesperson’s product or service will solve.
To accomplish this task, sales teams create and follow a sales strategy. The goal of a sales strategy is to lay out explicit guidelines and objectives for the sales organization to follow in order to maximize sales and ensure its sales force is on the same page. An effective sales strategy involves prospecting, qualifying leads, and creating meaningful messaging that shows prospective customers the value of a product or service.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing is the process of making potential customers interested in a business’s products or services. More broadly, the goal of marketing is to influence consumer decisions by communicating the value of a product or service. Marketers conduct market research in order to identify a target market and understand its needs. Based on that research, marketing teams generate a marketing strategy that formulates the four Ps of marketing: product, pricing, promotion, and place.