Sales and Marketing: Two Teams Working as One

“We can’t sell Ice to an Eskimo”, “The client isn’t interested in our product or service”, “The market is down, so people will only buy what they need and not what they want”. The number of times sales managers hear these excuses from their sales teams is tremendous. Even though the last excuse could be partly true in certain situations such as the current Covid pandemic, I believe, from my experience, that you can sell anything to anyone if the timing is right and a good marketing strategy is in place.

How many times did you go to the mall just to walk around and came back with a bag full of clothes or random items? I am sure when that happened, you did not need any or most of those items. When these purchases happen, most of the time they are not by accident, they are a result of the planning and strategy of the stores that you bought from and the collaboration between the sales and marketing teams of those stores.

The Marketing and Sales teams in an organization work together as a tag team in order to gain a customer. After all without a good marketing strategy the overall sales numbers of a certain company would be low and at the same time, even if that company has a great marketing strategy and a mediocre or less than average sales team, the sales numbers will also be low.

Some of the marketing departments of certain organizations tend to use a strategy to get customers to enter the store and then they know that if the customer steps foot in their store, there is a good chance that this customer will make a purchase.

For example an electronics store could advertise about selling a phone or laptop under cost, but when you visit the store, they would tell you that they are out of stock as all the offer items were sold out. Well they probably only had 4 or 5 pieces that were sold at that price, but the main reason for the advertisement was to get the largest number of people to come into their store in order to give their sales people a chance for a face to face encounter with potential clients, and that is where the sales team’s skill and training play a big role in closing deals.

As a sales person you should always know where to invest your time and energy, but at the same time you have to keep in mind that every lead can become a customer, so don’t just assume that a lead will not buy a product because he doesn’t need it ; if you make it appealing enough for him, he will be convinced that he needs it and ends up buying it. You have to always remember that the sales and marketing teams need and complete each other and if the marketing team did their part by getting you that meeting or face to face encounter, it is on you as a sales professional to score the goal or in other words close the deal.

Written by Adham H. Fayad. If you enjoy this article, don’t forget to check out our compilation of the World’s Richest Race Car Drivers, Richest Musicians, Richest Models, and Richest Rappers Richest Hockey Players Richest Film Directors. Richest Comedians, Richest Basketball Players.