Are Marketing and Sales Different?

As an expert marketer with a marketing degree from a top university and over a decade of marketing roles in my career, you can imagine that I get asked a lot about marketing, even without it in my title.

A bit of backstory there.

The reason I got into marketing in the first place was not because I loved it. It was because it challenged me. I remember taking my first marketing class and getting a B on an essay that I wrote and thinking, “this is totally subjective!” Math is all balanced out with a single right or wrong answer, but marketing? It’s up to us to persuade people to share our perspective and believe in our ideas. I loved it.

I loved the philosophy and psychology behind it. I loved the creativity it required. I loved the complexity of it. I was equal parts frustrated and fascinated.

It had me hooked!

I grew up wanting to be an entrepreneur and do something in the business world, but I had no idea what that was when I was in my teens applying to college. In fact, the school I chose — the only one I applied to, early decision, was a top university for finance and accounting. I'm also great at math. I aced every finance exam and ruined the curve for my classmates. I placed second in a competition hosted by PWC and won $500. I was even courted by my professors to take jobs in previous companies they worked at and offered to recommend me for. But it was boring to me.

It may sound trivial, but that less-than-perfect grade lit a fire in me to become the best at marketing. To master the nuances of human behavior and value creation and get equal parts recognition for my efforts in marketing as my efforts in finance.

Post-college, I took a Marketing Assistant job at a start-up and ended up creating my own role a year in as a marketing and sales liaison. Same thing happened at several other roles I held. There was a common theme of marketing and sales departments hating each other, not communicating well with one another, and the entire company suffering as a result.

As someone who’s naturally great at sales and relationship-building, I was happy to take on this role of repairing the thread between the two departments, and what I learned is still true.

Marketing + sales aren’t the same, but they're often treated like it.

Whenever someone asks me to explain the difference between sales and marketing, I say marketing is one to many and sales is one to one.

Imagine this as the difference between holding a megaphone to blast a message of “hope your meal is wonderful!” across a full restaurant of people versus walking up to an individual table and asking one individual at a time how their meal is.

Sales feels much more intimate, personal, connected — it welcomes a dialogue and often allows the parties involved to go deeper more quickly.

In a standard buyer’s cycle, there are 3 phases: awareness, consideration, decision.

Marketing is parts one and two. It allows you to meet a broader audience of people, make them aware of what you do, and invite them to engage with you in a non-threatening way. Depending on your style and the scale of your marketing, it can often escalate to sales more rapidly.

My marketing style is like that. I keep my tone fairly relaxed and casual and do my best to express gratitude regularly. I don’t often use phrases like “many people” when I can just say “you” or “us.” I also like to speak directly to my prospects.

The reason that's not a sales activity is because the outcome is different. There is no driver to buy something, just to consider me as a brand, or my offers as a potential solution for your needs and desires.

Sales is that third part of the buyer's cycle – decision. Once you realize you’re ready to have an easier or better experience with sales or want a mentor to help you work through things that are keeping you from your next level of success or joy, you’ll move to the next step in the process. Emailing me, booking a call with me, DMing me, or visiting a sales page where you have all the details of how to work with me and are actively deciding what you’ll do next.

This is why another way I describe marketing is by using the term “PRE-selling.”

Good marketing makes selling easier. It creates objection-free buyers. I can’t tell you the last time I had someone object to an offer on a sales call. It doesn’t happen, and that’s for a few reasons:

1. I’m an expert at marketing and sales
2. I am very transparent in my marketing (time and money)
3. I don’t make offers until I know what people truly need or want

If these are true for you, you'll have a 90%+ close rate too.

As you can see, marketing and sales are like oil and vinegar. They’re not the same ingredient and can be used in many ways on their own, but when mixed well together they become a delicious way to spice up a salad and pack a punch of flavor that stimulates the taste buds in just the right way.

Most think of oil and vinegar as things that naturally repel each other. They don’t mix well and separate easily, but that’s precisely why you need to keep blending them together. A continuous and thoughtful action that produces a symphony of flavor you can’t replicate otherwise.

With this in mind, I want to give you an action step to put what you’ve learned today into good use for your own business.

Reflect on the latest sales action you took, maybe it was speaking with someone over the phone or emailing back and forth with them. Then, write down three things they said or that you learned from that interaction.

Then, reflect on the latest marketing action you took, maybe it’s a post on social media or an email you sent. Write down three things you would change based on the sales reflections you had just made. Things you would have said differently, words to test, a story you could have told, it can be anything.

Then, re-share the marketing content with those changes incorporated within 24 hours, regardless of your current marketing calendar or content schedule. Feel free to share it with me, too. I’d love to know you took action and will happily share feedback if you’d like it!

In the meantime, notice how you're marketing and when you're truly selling and keep making small tweaks and improvements as you go!