Those of us in the advertising world should understand the difference between sales and marketing.

Too many times, though, we see one or the other relegated to a minor role, or we see that these two interrelated functions don’t bother to get in sync with one another. So now it is more important than ever to get both sides on the same page to increase agency success.

The Significance of Sales

For the business savvy, sales rule the day. It greatly affects your bottom line and directly influences both current and prospective client behaviors. Moreover, it’s usually the sales department that gets most of the attention, bringing glory when times are good, and feeling the pressure when income is down.

During the sales process, sales gets to interact face-to-face with a prospect and form a relationship that hopefully results in a new client. Sales is almost always dependent on the personality and communication skills of each individual department representative.

The Role(s) of Modern Marketing

Conversely, marketing should function as the foundation of any company, while serving as the tools for the sales team. Subsequently, marketing’s goal is to serve the brand in a multitude of ways: through creating the correct brand identity and messaging, ensuring all prospect touch points including web, collateral, search engine marketing, social media, advertising, and lead generation are cohesive.

As marketing arms the sales team with a branded and consistent sales approach, people should start to see some striking overlaps. Sales personnel should speak the same language when talking with a potential client, speaking to a large group, or representing the company at an industry event. A good marketing foundation will provide that, and more.

Synergy That Drives Success

When marketing and sales work together, both functions have a clear definition of their brand foundation, target prospect, and plan of approach. Marketing needs real world information from sales, so they can continually adjust their process and refine their tools.

App Data Room, a prominent sales and marketing performance platform, has a robust and comprehensive infographic that further details the importance of creating and maintaining a synergistic relationship between the two within any business environment.

Ultimately, sales needs to communicate with marketing to ensure what they have is working, and on point, while marketing needs to expertly direct prospects through the funnel, handing them off to sales when there is real opportunity.

When all of this comes together and the teams are working side-by-side, the result is a consistent and coordinated business approach that should create more awareness, exposure, sales opportunities, and a better company culture and in turn a better business.

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