Read time: 2 mins
The difference between sales and marketing? | FAQs
In order to have a sales strategy that works towards the success of your business, it’s important to understand the differences between the sales and marketing functions.
Watch this video where Gareth Cotten, the Head Tutor on the University of Cape Town Sales Management online short course, explains the differences between the two and how they affect business management.
So, to simplify it even further, marketing is about making potential customers aware of your product or service, and the sales function is about converting them into paying customers once they have shown interest in your product or service.
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Transcription
The difference between sales and marketing is a technical one but it’s also a very particular one. So let’s start with marketing; marketing is a slightly broader approach so marketing is about taking a product or a service and bending it towards what customers want. So it’s going into the market, looking for what customers are asking for and what they need and then building a service and then building a product offering to fit that and then, making people aware of it so bring their attention to the fact that you actually have this product to offer, what it costs that kind of thing. Sales on the other hand is actually about converting them to actually become customers so you have done your marketing beforehand, people know about your product now you actually have to influence them to buy. It is the actual person-to-person interaction for getting them to actually buy your product, whether that happens physically or online or over the phone, it doesn’t matter. It’s the actual influencing the person to become a customer and lay out the money and buy the product.