Marketing vs Sales

Along with product, price and place, sales, advertising, and sale promotion are all aspects of
promotion that make up marketing mix. It is the basic task of marketing management to combine the
elements of the marketing mix to achieve maximum effectiveness. This means that each element of the
marketing mix is responsible for not only a specific part of the marketing effort but also a specific part of
the assigned promotion job.
Sales and marketing have a common goal. The objectives of marketing are used in planning
promotion and in turn, sales. Marketing planners need to ask for and use input from sales personnel in
formulating their strategies; salespeople must understand their respective roles in marketing the
companys product.
The marketing decisions that have the greatest impact on the sales force are based on these
questions:
1. Which groups of consumers or market segments does the company want to serve?
2. What is the makeup of marketing efforts?
Most companies realize that is not worthwhile to attempt to sell to every potential costumer. A
more practical approach is to pinpoint a group of consumers or a market segment whose needs or wants
can best be served by the companys products. By targeting potential customers, the company focuses its
marketing efforts where they can do the most good. By concentrating on a limited number of customer
types, the sales force benefits from specialization that leads to improved selling performance.
Decisions made about the makeup of the marketing effort determinate the emphasis placed on
promotion. Although most companies recognize the importance of promotion in informing and
persuading consumers about product and services, there is wide variance in the promotion mixes. The
type of market seems to have the greatest impact on the emphasis placed on personal selling or
advertising. Oftentimes the role of advertising is limited to securing sales leads.
Advertising does a better promotion job for manufactures of consumer products and services. For
consumer nondurables, as an example advertising has the major role in creating demand while
salespeople are relegated to making sure the product is available on store shelves. Generally other
activities take on greater importance for consumer goods manufacturers who dont emphasize sale and
advertising. They use sales promotion or merchandising incentives to supplement and strengthen sales
and advertising efforts. Sales promotion varies from samples, coupons, refund offers, premiums, and
contests to retailer and wholesaler incentive program.
Even the experts have not been able to pinpoint one best promotion element or a superior
combination of promotion elements. The best promotion program for a company is the most cost-
effective mix of personal and nonpersonal sales channels coordinated by goal, content, sequence of use,
and style, and all dramatizing the selling proposition.
DEMONSTRATIONS SUPPLEMENT SALES PRESENTATIONS

Demonstration, in its many forms, gives salespeople an opportunity to appeal to customers
through all applicable senses. Obviously customers cannot smell or taste a machine, but they cand see it
and operate it while listening to a discussion of its benefits. Selling cookware presents a unique
opportunity for a salesperson to appeal to all five senses by making the sales presentation the preparation
and eating of a meal. This also affords ample opportunities for the salesperson to talk about product
benefits.
Sales presentations are not simply conversations between customers and salespeople. If they
were, salespeople could be picture as attempting to interact with customers who cannot see, fell, smell, or
taste. Sales people in such situations could not hope to be as effective as those who make use of as many
the customers senses as possible, particularly sight. Todays salespeople are equipped with vast array of
selling tools ranging from a simple presentation using slides or transparencies to a remote portable
terminal that connects salespeople to computers at their home offices.
Several questions concerning demonstrations must be answered:
1. How demonstrations can help sell?
2. Which sales aids are available
3. How to make sure demonstrations are successful
The positive benefits from using demonstrations are apparent in selling to individual
customers as well as to groups. In fact, demonstrations are must in team selling where customers
involvement is difficult to obtain.
Demonstrations help reveal the benefits of a product or service especially when such
benefits are intangible. For example, the only way to show the ride capabilities of an automobile
is to have the customer drive the car over a bumpy road and actually experience the ride
capabilities.
Another reason for using demonstration is the uniqueness it gives the sales presentations.
This helps to build a customer orientation indicating the salespersons concern with the special
needs or wants of particular customers. By using some form of demonstration, the salesperson
anticipates the inevitable response from a customer that although a product or service may work
for others, the customers problems are different.
Demonstrations are also helpful in showing how to use a product. For potential customers to
see value in a product, they have to see it in use, see the output from the product, and be conviced
that they can use the product to their advantage.
Repeated demonstrations give salespeople confidence during the sales presentation. Finally,
demonstrations provide uniformity in the content of the sales presentation. Individualization is
still practical through selections of what is included in the demonstration and what each
salesperson emphasizes in the sales presentation.
Sales presentations that include demonstration, as opposed to those that do not, have four
distinct competitive advantages:
1. A better and more attentive customer audience
2. A more consistent sales presentations
3. A surer understanding of the product benefits
4. A higher level of quality and flexibility in the sales presentation.
Experts tell us that nearly 90% of our understanding comes through what we see with our eyes
compared to only about 9% through our ears. This means that we can improve the chances of creating
understanding by a multiple of 10 if we include demonstration as part of the sales presentation.
Suppose, as an example, that a salesperson is attempting to sell a product with multiple usage.
The salespersorn knows that although a particular customer is interested in the versatility of the product,
certain uses are more important than others. If the salesperson just explains everything the product can do,
only confusion will result; the customer will not remember many of the uses by the time the saleperson
finishes the presentation. By not remembering, the customers misses the principal selling point the
versatility of the product.
When the salesperson demonstrates how the machine does each of the jobs, however, the
customer gets a much better idea of the many product uses. More importantly , rather than merely being
asked to belive, the customers sees a demonstration of what the product can do. A demonstration increase
the credibility of both the sales presentation and the salesperson.
Part of the demonstrations might include letting the customer operate the product. Once
encouraged to try out the product, the customer has added conviction and intensified desire for the item.
Conviction is important because the custom er must feel that a product is worth the asking price.
In demonstration a product with multiple uses or features, sellers often go through the sequence
three times. The first time salespeople show and explain each use or feature of the product, being alert to
which uses or features are of particular interest to customers. The second time through salespeople again
demonstrate the uses or features of the product, spending the major portion of time on those in which
customers appear most interested. The 3
rd
time through, salespeople allow customers to operate the
product, starting with the feature or use that has the greatest interest for each customer.
Several advantages accrue from demonstrating a product several times during the course of a
sales presentation:
1. Repetition helps the customers remember the many uses of the product, particularly those in
which interest is high
2. Appeals are made to the sense of sight
3. Appeals are made to the sense of touch
4. The customers takes an active part in the sales presentation.