Job Duties or Roles in Sales vs. Marketing
 

Thanks for all the great responses for my last question regarding Sales versus Marketing. I am really learning a lot!

Now I have another question which may be easier to answer. If you have a partnership and you are splitting up the responsiblities for who does what for the business, would you split up the sales duties from the marketing duties or are they basically the same? If you split them how would you do it?

Thanks for all the help and information.

Ken

The $64,000 question!
 

> Now I have another question which may be
> easier to answer. If you have a partnership
> and you are splitting up the responsiblities
> for who does what for the business, would
> you split up the sales duties from the
> marketing duties or are they basically the
> same? If you split them how would you do it?

Far too often the roles are merged. Usually, someone who has come up in the company through sales gets a final promotion to be in charge of 'sales and marketing'.

This happens because the people running the company rarely have any more idea about what each part of the equation mean than any of us do!

How many time have I had to deal with a 'Sales and Marketing Director' who understood perfectly well how to cold call or go on the road selling products, but had never even seen a marketing plan - let alone an advertising schedule?

The two disciplines are not interchangeable.

My advice is to get the best person you can to be in charge of sales. This guy is the front end of your business and has to have superb personal selling skills as well as being a great people manager.

Then, buy in the most experienced marketer that you can find. Look for a track record in a similiar field because oftentimes marketing skills are not readily transferrable from one industry to another. When you have got a great marketer in place, give him/her the power to get things done.

There is nothing more damaging to a company than a Marketing Director who has to go cap in hand to the board every time a strategic decision has to be made. Trust your choice.

But, before either the sales or marketing people spend one cent, make sure they work together to produce an effective and actionable marketing plan: the marketing person should build the structure of the plan and the sales person should input the expected consequences.

I have personally seen marketing plans (for surprisingly big corporations) that look great on paper and forecast sales in the tens of millions of dollars - but completely ignore the fact that to achieve such results the sales team would have to be increased ten-fold. Not very practical.

Sales don't usually happen in a vacuum and marketing must take into account the input of the sales teams.

Thats a long answer to a short question - but you might read between the lines that it is something I am passionate about.

Martin.


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