The biggest difference is that marketing professionals target customers who may be interested in purchasing a product or service, while sales professionals make the transaction and sell the product or service. Salespeople work with their customers to understand customer pain points and offer solutions based on their company's offerings. With the right performance incentives, this can also include focusing second on customer retention, market share and company growth, but ultimately, the salesperson spends the day interacting, individually, with customers who want to buy. However, almost 60% of the time, the customer makes a decision about the product before even talking to a sales representative.
The seller starts from the point of view that the product is the solution; the seller, however, begins by defining the problem that the product will solve. However, for those who balance the diverse needs of the sales and marketing departments, they are two different divisions with different objectives, needs and strategies. They don't have the benefits that salespeople enjoyed in the 90s, when each sale was an individual interaction between representative and customer. Both sales and marketing are incredibly important parts of a company's overall business landscape, and in the best companies, they work together to create an environment where quality flourishes and customers benefit.
Both sellers and sellers need to convince customers that the product in front of them is the solution to the customer's problem. Sellers in the modern economy, therefore, have reasonable assurance that the customer they are talking to will probably want to buy their product. They may publish content today that talks about a sale, a promotion or a news story, but they must often focus on the game in the long term, preparing for the next product release or content update. However, sales shouldn't think like salespeople, and salespeople who think like salespeople don't usually get the results they want.
