Planning of sales in marketing and sales units of businesses.
Marketing and sales are both aimed at increasing revenue. They are so closely intertwined that people often don’t realize the difference between the two. Indeed, in small organizations, the same people typically perform both sales and marketing tasks. Nevertheless, marketing is different from sales and as the organization grows, the roles and responsibilities become more specialized.
Sales vs Marketing Activities
The typical goal of marketing is to generate interest in the product and create leads or prospects. Marketing activities include:
· consumer research to identify the needs of the customers
· product development – designing innovative products to meet existing or latent needs
· advertising the products to raise awareness and build the brand.
· pricing products and services to maximize long-term revenue.
On the other hand, sales activities are focused on converting prospects to actual paying customers. Sales involves directly interacting with the prospects to persuade them to purchase the product. Marketing thus tends to focus on the general population (or, in any case, a large set of people) whereas sales tends to focus on individuals or a small group of prospects.