Sales and marketing are two essential terms prevalent in business. Though both the terms are closely related, these have distinct functions in business. However, these are often used interchangeably in any business strategy, leading to confusion and misconception about their function and roles. While sales and marketing are distinct components of business strategy, their conflation is prevalent for different reasons. Especially in India, interchangeable usage of sales and marketing is prevalent traditionally. Understanding the difference between sales and marketing is essential for businesses aiming to maximise growth and profitability.
Sales: An introduction
Sales is the process of directly engaging with potential customers to exchange goods or services in exchange for money. The process involves activities like prospecting, contacting leads, making presentations, negotiating and closing the deals. The ultimate goal of sales is to generate revenue by converting leads into customers. Sales professionals focus on building customer relationships addressing their needs and ultimately driving sales for the company. The primary objective of the sales persons is to generate immediate transactions and meet the sales targets.
An insight into marketing
On the other hand, marketing encompasses a broader set of activities aimed at promoting and selling products or services, building brand awareness, and attracting and retaining customers for the long term. The process involves market research, product development, pricing strategies, advertising, public relations, and digital marketing efforts. The main objective of marketing is to create brand awareness, generate interest among prospective customers and ultimately drive sales. Through various channels, marketing professionals strive to meet the ultimate goals by creating demand for products or services, creating a brand image, and nurturing customer relationships.
Reasons why most people in India call sales marketing
Sales and marketing are interconnected and complement each other within the business ecosystem. The conflation of sales and marketing is deeply rooted in cultural, historical and operational contexts in India and some other regions as well. The phenomenon can be attributed to various factors.
Limited understanding of marketing
In many organizations, especially in small-scale businesses or traditional industries, there may be a limited understanding of the broader concept of marketing, which is beyond direct selling or promotional activities. Ultimately, all the activities related to generating revenue or promoting products are referred to as ‘sales’ instead of ‘marketing.’
Historical context
Undeniably, the traditional business approach is prevalent in India. Historically, Indian businesses have focused more on sales activities instead of comprehensive marketing strategies. Traditional business practices focused on direct selling and relationship-based approaches instead of strategic plans for marketing and brand management. The traditional approaches emphasize on direct selling, negotiation and closing deals while overlooking the broader aspects of marketing like market research, branding and customer relationship management.
Industry practices
In many Indian organizations, especially traditional family-run businesses or small enterprises, there is a lack of clarity regarding the differences between sales and marketing functions. Due to limited resources and expertise, these businesses often merge sales and marketing roles into a single department and assign similar responsibilities to the sales team. In certain industries, particularly those that focus strongly on direct selling or distribution channels, sales activities overshadow marketing efforts in terms of visibility and perceived importance.
Perception of marketing as a secondary function
Marketing might be perceived as a secondary function to sales in some organisations instead of a strategic driver of business growth. Such perception may lead to misconceptions between the two terms.
Role of salespersons
Salespersons play a crucial role in generating revenue for the brands/businesses. Their activities like prospecting, pitching, and closing deals often get conflated with marketing.
Knowledge gap
Limited access to formal education and training programmes in marketing largely contributes to misconceptions about the importance of marketing in comparison to sales.
Language and cultural differences
India is socially, culturally and linguistically very diverse. A variety of languages are spoken across India and the country boasts thousands of cultures and traditions. Thus, there may not be a clear distinction between the terms ‘sales’ and ‘marketing’ leading to confusion between the two business concepts.
Calling sales as marketing hurts a business
Marketing and sales have evolved much in sophistication, especially over the last 2 decades. On the sales side, there is an evolution of the professional sales process into an advanced art and science form. This enables a salesman to understand the potential customer and make a close for getting an order quickly without wasting time on prospects that will be unlikely to convert to a sale.
In the same way, marketing has changed much due to the adoption of the Internet, social media, and later smartphone adoption with broadband. Now with changes being brought about by AI, there are more changes expected.
Calling two different subjects by the same name is equivalent to calling medicine as engineering or physics as biology. It prevents an organization from being able to make use of the developments and such practices will hurt that business. For all the reasons above, it is important that now, senior professionals start differentiating marketing and sales and call them by the right names.
