WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES / DESIMMILARITIES BETWEEN MARKETING AND SELLING



INTRODUCTION
MARKETING VS SALES
Marketing and selling are both activities aimed at increasing revenue. They are so closely intertwined that people often don’t realize the difference between the two. Indeed, in small organization the same people typically perform both sales and marketing tasks.
            Nevertheless, marketing is different from sales and as the organization grows, the roles and responsibilities become more specialized.

Sales vs Marketing Activities
            Marketing activities include:
i.          Consumer research (to identify the needs of the customers) product development (designing innovative products to meet existing or latent needs.
ii.         Advertising – The products to raise awareness and build the brand. The typical goal of marketing is to generate interest in the product and create leads or prospects.
            On the other hand, sales activities are focused on converting prospects to actual paying customers. Sales involves directly interacting with the prospects to persuade them to purchase the product.
            Marketing thus tends to focus on the general population (or in any case, a large set of people whereas sales tends to focus on individuals or a small group of prospects.
Marketing
·        Identifies appropriate prospects
·        Effectives communicates image and  capabilities of the firm
·        Creates awareness of and emphasizes an appeal – a differentiation factor about the firm.
·        Perfects customer service
·        Request feedback from clients on a regular basis.
·        Anticipates and meets needs marketing often necessitates cultural changes at every level in the firm.
Ultimately, marketing strives to make all interactions with your firm “aka moments of truth” into positive experiences.
Selling is:-
·        Proactive seeking of prospects
·        Interacting to qualify prospects
·        Effective  acknowledgement of he prospects concerns
·        Closing the sale – getting hired
·        Following up and staying in contact when not hired.


Successful sellers use active listening skills and demonstrate the ability to meet the prospects needs by conveying competence confidence.
The Difference Between Marketing and Selling
            One needs to know the difference to be able to reach customers.
            Many business owners and practitioners mistakenly think of selling and marketing as interchangeable concepts. This is particularly true in the case of small businesses which often equate marketing with selling deliberately due organizational and resource limitations. But ever of sales and marketing are intrinsically linked, the fact is that they are two very different business activities.
The Difference
            Selling begins when a product or service becomes available for consumption or use. This function covers retailers awareness and confidence on the product and cultivating customer advocacy for the market of the product or service.
Marketing, on the other hand, is much broader in scope and starts long before the selling process takes place. It covers everything about the market, customer and the brand.
            Marketing is about crating consumer relevant brand that satisfy specific market needs. It is about building product and brand awareness influence consumers purchaser consideration and making them repeat customers.
            Marketing and sales are complimentary functions- any of which can’t achieve its goals without other. And they need two key elements to make them successfully do this:-
1.                  An extensive understanding of their customers and
2.                  The ability to adapt to the changing needs, attitudes, and behaviours of the market.
To ensure continuing sales success, a marketing strategy needs to achieve four specific goals for a particular products or service strong consumer focus, meaningful segmentation clear and compelling brand positioning and a relevant marketing mix.                 
Difference Between Selling And Marketing
            In general we use marketing and selling as synonyms but there is a substantial difference between both the concepts. It is necessary to understand the differences between them for a successful marketing manager. Selling has a product focus and mostly producer driven. It is the action part of marketing only and has short term goal of achieving market share. The emphasis is on price variation for closing the sale where the objective can be stated as “I must some how sell the product”. This short-term focus does not consider a prudential planning for building up the brand in the market place and winning competitive advantage through a high loyal set of customers. The end means of any sales activity is maximizing profits through sales maximization.
            When the focus is on selling the businessman thinks that after production has been completely the task of the sales force starts. It is also the task of the sales department to sell whatever the production department has manufactured aggressive sales methods are justified to meet this goal and customers actual needs and satisfaction are taken for granted. Selling converts the product into cash for the company in the short run. Marketing as a concept and approach is much wider than selling and is also dynamic as the focus is on the customer rather than the product while selling revolves around the needs and interest of the manufacturer or marketer, marketing revolves around that of consumer. It is the whole process of meeting and satisfying the needs of the consumer.
Marketing consists of all those activities that are associated with product planning, pricing, promoting and distributing the product or service. The task commences with identifying consumer needs and does not end until feedback on consumer satisfaction from the consumption of the product is received. It is a long chain of activity, which comprises production, packing promotion, pricing, distribution and then the selling.
Consumer needs become the guiding force behind all these activities. Profits are not ignored but they are built up on a long run basis. Mind share is more important than market share in marketing.
ACCORDING TO PROF. THEODORE LEVITT “The difference between selling and marketing is more than semantic. A truly marketing minded firm tries to create value satisfying goods and service which the consumers will want to buy. What is offers for sale is determined not by the seller but by the buyers. The seller takes his cues fro the buyer and the products become the consequences of the marketing efforts, not vice verse. Selling merely concerns itself with thick and techniques of getting the customers to exchange their cash for the company’s products. It does not bother about the value satisfaction that the exchange is all about on the contrary, market views the entire business as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover create a rouse and satisfy customers needs.
Selling
1.                  Emphasis on the product
2.                  Company manufacturing the product first
3.                  Management is sales volume oriented
4.                  Planning is short run oriented in terms of today’s products and markets.
5.                  Stresses needs of seller
6.                  Views business as a good producing process.
7.                  Emphasis on staying with existing technology and reducing costs.
8.                  Different departments work as in a highly separate water tight compartments
9.                  Cost determines price
10.             Selling views customers as a last link in business
Marketing
1.                  Emphasis on consumer needs/wants
2.                  Company first determines customers needs and wants and then deliver a product to satisfy these wants.
3.                  Management is profit oriented.
4.                  Planning is long run oriented in today’s products and terms of new products, tomorrows markets and future growth.
5.                  Stresses needs and wants of buyers
6.                  Views business as consumer producing process satisfying process.
7.                  Emphasis on innovation on every existing technology and reducing every sphere, on providing by adopting a superior technology.
8.                  All departments of the business integrated manner, the sole purpose being generating of consumer satisfaction
9.                  Consumer determine price, price determines cost.
10.             Marketing views the customer last link in business as the very purpose of the business.      
Marketing and selling and the difference between the two
“Marketing” is not “Sales” it’s critical to know the difference. Broadly, marketing creates the atmosphere to make it easy for sales to happen. Marketing consists things like.
·        Marketing Strategy: Your product must be a med at consumers in one only of the Mass market, Mid –market or High End (one product in the entire history of marketing has ever succeeded in all three of those consumer areas). Aiming your product at all three in a shotgun approach confuses going broke.
·        Target Market: Strategy includes identifying a specific group of consumers (age bracket, etc) within your one Mass, Mid of High End market area. The better we identify our target group, the easier it is to make sales.
·        Research your Competitors: “Know your enemy”.
·        Point of Difference or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as it is sometimes called why should a customer walk past my competitors to come to me?
·        Writing our marketing material: brochures, adverts websites, etc, all precisely pitched to our Target Market.
·        Developing our brand names and good reputation (‘Image’). Chasing free editorial.
·        Devising tactics to turn first time buyers into repeat customers.
·        And, the list goes on and on… marketing is anything that creates atmosphere to make it easier for sales to happen.
In my book, the most critical of all above is your Point of Difference or USP.
‘Sales’ obviously is getting out and writing the orders tough disciplined work. This involves skills like ‘closing’ the sale- very different skills to marketing.
A marketer is a creative person, a law unto himself, a person with few boundaries, a person who lives inside the head of your customer, a person who dreams and creates at any/ all hours of day and night, a person who can send normal disciplined people crazy. For a marketer the thrill of the chase is creating original thinking/ products- original ideas that work, ideas that nobody else thought about. Top marketers are some of the world’s highest paid professional people.
What is the Difference Between Marketing and Selling
            Oftentimes, business owners confuse the act of selling their products to a customer as marketing. In actuality, selling is a small portion of the entire marketing scheme. Selling is the transaction where a product is transferred from the business owner to a buyer for a price. In contrast, marketing is process that involves several steps ranign from the generation of of a product idea to the delivery of that product to the customer.
            Even after delivery of the product to the costumer, the marketing process continues with direct communication with the customer to obtain feedback about the product.
            In the business world, marketing is defined by the four P’s: Product, Price. Place, and Promotion. It is the process of planning and executing the product idea, price, promotion, and distribution of that product to satisfy the needs of the customer. This definition illustrates how the marketing process is a proactive approach done often before the product or service is produced and sold. This allows business owners to behave like price-makers. In other words, marketing should not be an after though of production but should be considered well before production takes place.
            For agriculture, value-added business owners often think about marketing their product when it is ready to be sold. Since most agricultural products are perishable, this often puts these farmers at the mercy of their customers. This puts farmers in the position of being price-takers with little control of the price they will receive and/ or the quantity they will sell. By thinking ahead, this gives the owner more control over business profitability.        
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