by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“What brings the vital growth edge to an organization? Is it marketing or sales or both?”

 Consider some of our great sports franchises: New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Manchester United, Real Madrid, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Knicks, Oakland Warriors, Montreal Maple Leafs, or Chicago Black Hawks. Why do these teams resonate in people’s minds? What is it that brings them their special edge? Certainly their professionalism and ability to win games is right up there. However, their ability to market and sell their team luster is right up there, too.

Having said that: there’s a tremendous amount of fuzziness and definition crossover between the two disciplines. We often use one to mean the other, even though one is clearly quite different from the other. So often the lack of clarity between these two vital disciplines is the difference between a fairly successful organization and an outstanding one. The correct use of both can have great impact on your organization’s momentum.

The fact that certain teams have created a certain cachet about them over sustained periods of time means they know how to attract paying crowds, allure top players, and act as magnets for top executive talent. These three factors are among their fundamental differences over your average teams. The good ones know how to market and sell themselves.

For these reasons, if you wish for your organization to become a household name, then you are obliged to become outstanding at both marketing and sales. But then you also need to understand the fundamental difference, rather than view them as interchangeable functions, as many of us do, if you’re going to build vital momentum. In particular, marketing becomes your magnetic force; whereas selling induces people’s purchasing decisions.  Understanding these two factors is crucial when it comes to building momentum.

Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Instagram are all household names that have risen to prominence in a relatively short period of time. They have created brand names for drawing purchasers to their franchise, getting people to sign-up, and then fulfilling their customer delivery promise.  With these key drivers they continue to build momentum across the globe. They have understood the difference between marketing and sales, and that one comes before the other.

When it comes to marketing, we can think in terms of the five Ps:

» Possibilities – Do we understand all the market opportunities that lie out there for our products/services both today and in the future?

» Products/Services – What products/services will most attract our chosen potential customer base?

» Placement – What is our optimum means for reinforcing/introducing us to the right channels that access the right customers/prospects?

» Pricing – Do we pinpoint the right price-points for our intended customers and prospects?

» Promotion – Do we have exposure to the right marketing outlets/possibilities, so that we can traverse that tricky separation between our enterprise and likely buyers? (NOTE: There’s not much point in spending a lot of time and resources on this factor unless we can be sure the other four are pretty solid.)

In contrast to these marketing factors, we have the five Rs of sales:

» Relationships – What are our optimum means of building relationships with our targeted customers/prospects?

» Requirements – What are the exact needs of our prospective or existing customers?

» Reasoning – What form of proof will we need to share with our prospects or existing customers to generate sincere buying desire?

» Reckoning – In what way will be expected to negotiate with prospects or customers in order to solidify mutually comfortable transactions?

» Resolution – What is our optimum approach for closing-out any transaction to allow prospect/customer purchases to be consummated? What form of after-sales activities or factors will need to be offered in order to preserve customer good-will?

Based upon these two definition frameworks, it occurs to this writer: “Why do we habitually refer to these two disciplines as ‘sales and marketing’ in that order, instead of the other way around?” It is clear that effective marketing brings the horse before the cart, as it should be, but we unwittingly – including this writer – go in the other direction. Is that because they feel more tangible and actionable by putting them first? Just maybe it’s because we don’t know how to create brand names that we see marketing as secondary? Sales are much more difficult without effective marketing.

The founders of Prêt-a-Manger built a hugely successful daily sandwich business without any traditional advertising and promotional programs: although the equity firms that bought the business have bungled things in more recent times. The founders created a brand through the quality of their stores, the freshness of their sandwiches, and their slick customer service. Those three were vital marketing ploys. It’s more than likely we look upon branding as an expensive proposition, although with the right priority focus it doesn’t have to be that way. More often in effective consumer oriented companies; marketing is their primary and initial focus.

By using these delineators, you are now able to objectively evaluate your organization’s current positioning on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is at the top end, for each of the five Ps and Rs. Try to be as objective as you can. Now you are in a position to spot your enterprise’s relative strengths, which you should build upon; as well as shortfalls, where you can figure out ways to turn things around. This can be the basis of a great team exercise, too.

So your potential key pointers to take away from this article include:

» Focus on your marketing activities and platform before focusing on your sales – marketing is the “red carpet” remember.

» Be brutally objective about your evaluation of your current P and R positioning – which means there won’t be many 5s.

» Make it a team exercise, since you’ll then get the “buy-in” from the get-go; as well as some fresh ideas… and by being open to those ideas as much as possible?

To learn more about “building momentum,” talk with: