Confusion regarding the role of Marketing, Sales & Brand teams

When big local names of Abdul Monem's stature looks for National Sales Manager with MBA in Marketing, I wonder what went wrong? Yes, it's true that the country has thousands of bankers who studied only on science based education but that doesn't make any sense. I see there is an enormous opportunity for all the universities to open up a separate major on Sales/Business Development. This should become the most wanted course of the era in this overpopulated country with high dependency on manufacturing industry.

We surely have almost a million software industry enthusiasts in the market already. I see technology investors looking for business developers as they fail to sell their well developed product created with ample determination over a year or more. They hire and fire complaining about the quality of salesmanship but they fail to admit their lack of market research before designing the product. Here is where a marketing genius could have played the key role. So, why would you need a marketer instead of a researcher? A researcher would figure out the problem just like the way a pathologist would find out the key symptoms.

Researchers can also prepare you a report but only a marketer should know how to heal over the time and plan for better revenue.

The task of a marketer starts even before the product gets produced. A marketer would work closely with the research team to figure out the 'need gap' of a certain type of consumer in an industry. The unique idea to solve the 'need gap' would be the Unique Selling Proposition for the product which will surely help the sales team on selling the product to retailers at the initial stage.

A marketer, more specifically, a Brand Manager would come up with an emotional need based on the USP - a task which shall be better be commissioned to a creative agency. The brand team will make sure this brand positioning is practiced both internally and externally, on any sort of communication. The marketing manager will be responsible to carry out this brand proposition to all the stakeholders through the most efficient mode of communication channels (tv, print, billboard, radio, D2D, activation, trade marketing, digital buying, social media engagement etc.).

Meanwhile, the sales team will reach the right stores/lead and close the deal through the given Unique Selling Proposition. Certainly, advertisements play a big role in gaining a retailer/lead's confidence. Creating the advertisement was the task of the brand manager and the marketing manager made sure that it reaches the right audience to ease the task of sales team. However, in terms of a trade offer, the alignment between sales, marketing and brand team is highly crucial because sales team/business development team would be the key source of communication to reach the audience.

Lately, I was sharing an example with one of directors of a university who questioned the need of branding whose 'Marketing' students bring him the more than 60% revenue. He complained about the loyalty of young teachers; he pays as good as North South University still two young faculties who live around the neighborhood left his university and joined NSU wasting 4 hours on the road everyday. I could only laugh.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your opinion