I recently had a interview with a company that contacted me for a “marketing” position. I was pretty excited, and after some shopping, makeup, and a little bit of stress– I was sitting in my interview. What had at first seemed like a promising position, I soon realized was not what had been described to me. What this company had titled “marketing” was actually door to door sales. I had been sales swindled, and I wasn’t even buying anything! But what is the difference between marketing and sales? Was I being blatantly lied to, or is marketing/sales just a technicality?
Well according to The Tronvig Group,
…sales has the power to change conditions, to transform a situation through the skills of the salesperson. Marketing, however, generally does not possess such transformative power. Marketing needs to work with conditions as they are. One could simplify and say: Sales is persuasion. Marketing is understanding applied.
That seemed a little confusing to me…”understanding applied”? What does that mean? So I kept looking. This explanation from The Balance made a lot more sense.
If we broke it down to the basics, marketing is everything that you do to reach and persuade prospects and the sales process is everything that you do to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract.
This is a bit clearer to me, I can see where Marketing ends, and sales begins, but its still tricky trying to find the distinction line within sales. Is a salesman NOT in sales until they close a sale? If they promote any unique part of the thing they’re selling, or explaining an attribute it holds, are they then a marketer? While this may not be the most important question in the world, it was intriguing to me. What do you think? What’s the difference between the two? Where does marketing end, and sales begin?
BoweryJE22
I think marketing is a subset of the broad category called “sales.” It’s a sub-category that doesn’t include closing a sale or making appointments though, so I think it was a little deceptive of that company to say that they had a marketing position for you. Door to door sales implies some level of closing sales, or at the very least negotiating future contact with the prospect.
That is an interesting interpretation of the differences between the two. In my mind I have always seen marketing as just a broad advertisement in attempt to pull clients to your business, while sales is the process of personally pitching the idea/service/product to the client and trying to reach an agreement. So the door to door seems a little more sales than marketing, unless you are just going door to door to inform people about the business without attempting to sell at the moment.
It is a shame they did that to you! False advertising! I liked how you distinguished the two. This post definitely cleared them up for me, thank you! Great article!
I generally think of marketing as bringing customers in the door, so to speak. Whereas sales is the process of serving them and getting them to buy once they’re in the door. I think marketing is the first step in the sales process, or before the sales process starts. It’s more of the pre-analysis stage/prospecting, I think.
Ah, companies and their loaded job titles… classic. Although, in this case, what may be perceived as false advertising may just be their marketing at work. Perhaps, should you get the job, you can be there to educate them along those principles so no other prospects get sticker shocked!