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Sales vs. Marketing


Do you have a handle on your marketing?  Make sure
you're not failing to differentiate between SALES
and MARKETING. The following letter explains:

Dear Sales/Marketing Manager,

There's a sign above my desk that reads: LUCK IS
WHERE PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY. It's a
reminder that should be above every sales
manager's desk --including yours.

You're certainly well aware that any sale you, or
your sales team, makes is the result of seeing an
opportunity in the form of a customer's need and
being prepared to satisfactory that need. Some
might view the resulting transaction as a matter of
luck, but you know better. It's preparation, and an
outstanding sales team, that brings results.

MARKETING is those things you do to facilitate
SALES. It helps to bring additional opportunities in
the form of customer inquiries to your doorstep. It
simplifies the salesperson's task by pre-selling the
customer. After the sale, it functions to keep past
customers satisfied and coming back, thus freeing
up the sales team to concentrate on new business.

Unfortunately, too many people confuse sales with
marketing. The two are very different. The
personalities and skills of people working in each
are very different. It's a serious mistake to let
your marketing pros try to sell and your sales
experts try to market.

Is your marketing (i.e. sales support) as rock firm
as your sales department? If it isn't, you're
cheating your salespeople out of sales and lost
commissions, and your company out of a healthier
bottom line and a larger, more secure, market share.

Ask yourself the following: Does your sales
literature stress user benefits instead of product
features? Do the editors of your industry's trade
magazines have your company's name and products
always on the tip of their tongue (and word
processor)? Your brochures should tell - your
cover letters should sell. Do they? Every pitch
used by your sales team should also be in some sort
of written brochure or flier and used in either the
pre or post-sales follow-up. Is it?

Marketing begins with new, hard hitting sales
letters and brochures. It expands into developing
and maintaining a PR/media data base and mailing
list. In its full form it's a ongoing, never ending,
behind the scenes factory of newsletters, press
releases, trade magazine articles (and reprints),
case studies, technical presentations, sales
letters, follow-up letters, brochures, trade show
strategies, product reviews, product rollouts,
product photographs, executive interviews, and, of
course, skillfully worded advertising.

XYZ Corp. has been providing those kinds of
marketing and copywriting services to companies
like yours for the past seven years. Here's four
reasons why you should be utilizing XYZ Corp. for
your sales support functions: 1) unlike others in
their field, XYZ Corp. staffers have technical,
engineering, and computer backgrounds; 2)
þoutsidersþ, like XYZ Corp., provide an injection of
new ideas, enthusiasm, and fresh insights that in-
house staffers lose over time; 3) XYZ Corp. rates
are 30% to 60% less than what agencies charge; 4) We
contacted you. This letter is part of an aggressive
marketing program of my own -- and you only want to
do business with marketing companies that practice
what they preach!

Sincerely,

XYZ Corp.

P.S. - I've enclosed a reply card (a must-have
marketing tool) to simplify advancing to the next
step. But time is money for both your company and
for me, so why not just pick up the telephone and
call me right now at 713/486-1587?

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