“What is the difference between marketing and sales?” Anonymous
This should be one of my shorter blogs. My simple answer is: “Sales is one to one and Marketing is one to many.”
You could have asked a more complicated question: ‘What is the difference between a sales department and a marketing department.’ That answer will vary greatly depending on your organization. If you sell direct to consumer (retail) company, McDonalds, Amazon, Delta, etc., you will be very marketing (one to many) focused to drive revenue at your organization. If you are a business to business company, Boeing, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, you will be very sales (one to one) focused with marketing to support sales (increase quality of inbound leads to sales department) and enhance brand awareness. At companies like Coke and Microsoft you have hybrid model with marketing to drive consumers and businesses to your brand, and sales people to sell to business, resellers, distributors, retail organizations, etc. If you are at a small company you may have one department doing both sales and marketing. Additionally, marketing can have lots of additional functions including but not limited to product direction, internal communication, literature, support, etc.
I did some research on sales and marketing definitions and below are the responses from dictionary.com and wikipedia.com.
Sales American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
sale (sāl) n.
1. The exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent; the act of selling.
2. An instance of selling.
3. An opportunity for selling or being sold; demand.
4. Availability for purchase: a store where pets are for sale.
5. A selling of property to the highest bidder; an auction.
6. A special disposal of goods at lowered prices: coats on sale this week.
7. sales
a. Activities involved in selling goods or services.
b. Gross receipts.
Sales link in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales
Marketing American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
mar·ket·ing (mär'kĭ-tĭng) n.
1. The act or process of buying and selling in a market.
2. The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.
Marketing link in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing
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