What is the difference between sales and marketing and why does it even matter?

This might sound like a purely academic question until you start running a business and then you begin to wonder who to hire!

Do I hire a salesperson? Do I hire a marketer? And regardless of what I call the person, what would be their actual day to day responsibilities?

This is actually a VERY practical question for the business owner who thinks it’s now time to hire someone to take on the revenue functions of a business.

So what is the difference between the two?

Marketing is “bringing people into the door”.

Sales is “collecting the money from them” and securing the commitment.

They both work within the same continuum because sales and marketing are concerned with how to get money from potential customers.

However they require a different skill set and a different mindset because creating awareness and brining people into the business requires a different set of skills than getting them to part with their hard earned money.

Not everyone who comes into the business is ready to buy today. They may also have one or two questions or impediments before they’re ready to take the next step. These are situations where sales skills come in handy.

So that’s the answer to the question!

If you think you are very good at “collecting money” when people come into the store, then you need to hire a marketer to make sure that more people visit your store or your website.

If you think internally you’re doing a good job at attracting the crowds, but you do a bad job of “collecting money” or “retaining clients”, then you need to hire a sales professional and also work on customer service processes.

Some people say customer service is a subset of sales because the chief concern of customer service is to make sure that nobody leaves angry.

If people are happy enough, we can get them back to buy from us in the future. If you look at things this way, customer service also fulfill a revenue function in the business.

All these are essential to growing your business, but these main strands aren’t the same thing.

Some would say that sales and marketing are siblings.

Others would say that marketing is the mother while sales, customer service and all the other things that come after are the children.

Regardless we know that we’re dealing with the same family, but different skill sets.