Business Myths Debunked: Sales People ≠ Marketing People -- by Nate Winter

Sales and marketing are powerful forces that undeniably require collaboration in today's world of business. Marketing develops overarching strategies to make products and services competitive and appealing. Sales then uses those strategies to actually acquire new customers and generate new business from existing customers. These two disciplines must work in tandem to achieve success.

Because of this close relationship, sales and marketing are often coupled as a single entity. While this coupling is certainly convenient in many cases, it creates an unhealthy potential to overlook the important differences between sales and marketing and the people responsible for each.

Marketing People
These are the strategic-minded. They develop brands, campaigns, and other tools for a wide array of media that rely on consistency and longevity. It is their job to create and distribute product messages that are original in order to attract customer attention, but also consistent so as to not confuse the customers they've attracted. Marketing is a discipline of coordination and consistency driven by big-picture, long-term thinkers.

Sales People
These are the execution-minded. They use the marketing plan and make it happen it on the ground level, winning sales one by one. They deal with a wide variety of customers who have different sets of needs, attitudes, motivations, and budgets. Good sales people know that every potential customer is different, so they react to the uniqueness of the customer in order to close the sale. Sales is a discipline of distinction and adjustment driven by detail-focused people who see the world one customer at a time.


Right here we have identified some key characteristics that make Marketing people and sales people very different. Neither set of traits is objectively superior to the other. Each set of traits is vital to the goals of its discipline. Marketing people need to create big ideas that work across media and extended timelines. And sales people need to focus on the unique needs of the customer in front of them to win sales.

The challenge is that, when sales and marketing people are lumped together to make decisions, the boundaries between best marketing practices and best sales practices begin to blur. This causes frustration between team members and dysfunction in the sales and marketing program.


Why Marketing People Don't Make Good Sales People

Marketing people play the numbers and look at the whole picture. If research shows that a certain marketing plan will appeal to 75% of the target audience, that's a good plan and should be implemented. Marketing people don't think of the remaining 25% who are left out of the plan. They view those people as a small loss that enables a focused effort toward the significant gain of the 75% target.

In a sales environment, a marketing person faced with a challenging prospective customer would chalk that prospect up to one of the 25% that can’t relate to the marketing plan. They wouldn't devote their full efforts to win that prospect. They'd just say, "This is how we're promoting our products. If that doesn't appeal to you, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm sorry I couldn't help you today." The prospect would walk out the door empty handed. Over time you'd find that sales are lower than forecasted because the fervent salesmanship of a true sales person wasn't there. Marketing people believe that marketing ideas can sell the product almost entirely on its own and tend to discount the value of strong sales techniques.

Why Sales People Don't Make Good Marketing People

Sales people tend to look at the sales process anecdotally in terms of opportunities lost. When they do all they can to win a customer and it still doesn't work, they are affected. It makes them doubt their sales abilities as well as the marketing program overall, even though the marketing plan only intends to reach 75% of the target audience. Commission-based incentives are also a powerful factor here, as a lost sale means lost money. In order to avoid the disappointment of lost sales, they want to adjust the marketing program so that they can sell to more of the people they're not converting. As people who specialize in adjusting themselves to what the customer wants, they expect the marketing plan to adjust in order to back them up in any situation. What they fail to see is that adjusting the marketing plan to appeal to the missing 25% removes focus from the primary 75%. Over time you'd find that sales are lower than forecasted because the focused marketing message that appeals to 75% of the target market is no longer in tact. At that point a sales person would suggest another adjustment to attract another subset of the target audience. This means changing the marketing plan again, a large task considering the goal of a marketing plan is for many small efforts to coordinate cohesively.


The different motivations and personality types inherent to sales and marketing are what allow each discipline to function successfully on its own, but can also lead to downfall when not kept in check. The key to a successful sales and marketing program lies in striking a healthy balance between powerful, strategic marketing and agile, tactical sales.

-- Nate Winter