I heard about a job opening recently where a highly-regarding local company was looking for someone to fill both a marketing and sales position. When I heard this I had to smile. This is a great company who I hope to work with in the future as well, but I wanted to tell them that the roles are not that different. All marketing is not sales but all sales definitely is marketing. Everything is marketing.
In college I had a small little start-up company with a college friend. I distinctly remember getting into a heated disagreement with him over a simple fax cover sheet. For some reason our standard fax cover sheet was unavailable and he just wanted to handwrite the cover message and fax on a blank sheet of paper. “It’s just a fax,” he insisted. But it wasn’t just a fax. It was communications from our company. Consciously or not, we were sending a message about our company, our relationship with the fax recipient and our brand. And I didn’t want to send them the kind of message articulated by a handwritten fax on plain paper.
Did it matter? It mattered to me. Every opportunity you have in front of a potential customer or current client is an opportunity to send a message about your company and how you value that individual. Will you strengthen your brand or will you hurt it? Will you open up new opportunities or close existing doors?
Sales is no different. Everything your sales people do is marketing for your company and representing your brand. How do they generate new leads? How do they answer questions? How responsive are they to criticism? How do they react to being told no? How do they follow up after making the sale? Just like their punctuality and appearance sends a message, so does every interaction with the client. And that message directly relates to your brand.
Business people like to say that you’re business is either growing or dying. The same applies to your brand. And if the message sent doesn’t help your brand then it can only hurt it.
Some aspects of marketing only indirectly affect your sales, but everything you do, every action you make, be it sales, customer service, accounting, or fax cover sheets are marketing. They help paint a picture of your company, and that picture helps people make value judgments about you. What message does your sales team send? What picture is your marketing painting about you?
