How Marketing Strategies differ from Sales Strategies

For a successful business operation marketing as well as sales strategies are important and require proper utilization. Marketing strategies are needed to increase your clientele by advertising and providing information about the business and the products and services being offered; while sales strategies help in closing the deals and thus provide revenue to keep the business profitable.

Many small businesses have a single person for both marketing and sales strategies but it is advisable that professional persons should plan and implement the specific strategies. This can only be achieved if you have enough finances available.

A few basic differences between marketing and sales strategies are given below:

·        The marketing strategies are concerned with providing information to your potential clients about the business in general, the list of products and services offered by your business, and the extra benefits the customer will get as compared to your competitors. Sales strategies are used for gaining customer orders which result in revenue generation.

In other words marketing strategies generate sales opportunities while the sales strategies convert these opportunities into actual sales and revenue generation.

·        Marketing strategies have focus on communicating with your possible customers and they provide information about products, services, and competitive edge over similar business owners. The methods utilized for communication are the use of brand name, advertisement, media releases, public relations, etc.

On the other hand sales strategies utilize their communication skills mainly to obtain agreement of the customers to purchase products and services to generate revenue. The communication mostly is individual to individual in person or by phone.

·        The strategies concerned with marketing and sales are different and the personality types of the persons dealing with them are also different.

The people working on marketing strategies prefer to handle matters related to effective communication, problem solving, and reaching out to clients in the local demographical area. The sales team is more adept at working on the individual client to close the deal.

·        The examples of the actual work concerned with strategic marketing are advertisement, creation of a website and its content, issuing press releases, networking, social get-togethers for product promotion, designing marketing materials, exhibitions and trade shows, and all public relation matters.

The sales strategies include work like making calls for sales, conducting sales meetings, making estimates about sales, hosting customers for sales oriented lunches and dinners, outlining the benefits of the products and services for the customers, etc.