Where does selling end and marketing begin?

What a thread! My approach to aggregate some of the findings:

1. Using a quote I appreciate very much: "Marketing exists to help sales people sell." from my friend, the esteemed sales enablement professional and thought leader Michael Fox. It sounds simple, but it's usually effective and covers all major topics, especially that the design point is the customer and also, that there is a service orientation included, from both, sales and marketing, towards the customer.

2. Explaining the different views, marketing and sales have when they are looking at customers. Marketing comes from a go-to-market perspective with a broad market oriented view, focused on e.g. markets, regions, industries, portfolio packaging, targeted promotions, value frameworks.
Sales instead comes from a go-to-customer perspective with an account oriented micro view, focused on e.g. account planning and execution, capability configuration and value matching.

Often, this basic difference is overlooked and that's often a root cause for many misunderstandings.
But, we need both, we need the go-to-market view and we need to translate it into a go-to-customer view to be successful.

Very interesting question. It brings us back to that old controversial question between the egg and the chicken; who came first?
Like Robert said, "Nothing to sell, no marketing". But we should always keep in mind that marketing help sales growing. The complemantarity between sales and marketing is very usefull and inescapable for any company who wants to be competitive.

Why has ever been this competition among marketing and sales? Whereas one should think they are both equally important functions for any business-centric organization. After all, they are two sides of the same coin.

Marketing creates awareness through advertising, collateral, media etc. Sales is number generation and more aggressive.
When it comes to customer service, both should go hand-in-hand. It is sales which is the touch point with the customer. To get genuine and effective feedback, one needs an efficient sales person who is concerned with the business beyond targets. Marketing & CS can then follow-up.

So it is an ongoing cycle. To keep the balance, each needs to be moving in the proper direction and at the right pace. One does not have to outdo another or interfere with each other.

So Marketing = message creation and development,execution
Sales = Face of marketing which conveys the message direct
Retention of customer ultimately depends of experience, engagement and evaluation as future prospect. For which, neither marketing or sales can singularly take the responsibility. It should ideally be a collective effort.

Marketing should have involvement at every point in the process of operating a company to provide an outward expression of its company's value. It should help develop need, understand and develop generic propositions and use whatever resources it can to help train the business and its customers what it is that the company does.

Sales finds (sometimes with marketing's help but often not) the customers, drives through the sales often creating and developing propositions not even considered yet and maintains the relationship with the customer for its lifetime with the company.

The two operate in parallel therefore one does not end or begin with the other. IMHO.

http://beatingtarget.com

Thank you for your replies, although they seem contradictory at least in part. Can anyone bring it altogether?

Nothing to sell, no marketing.

Marketing should be aimed to employees (inward) and customers (outward). Marketing is a mix of proposal templates, visibility, incentives, attitude, sens of listening, market awareness, knowledge of your company's capacity to deliver, partnership and a profond will to achieve success. Selling is the good usage of marketing efforts.

Marketing and sales could not be dissociate. Together and hand in hand with leadership and hability to deliver, they are the key to business growth. At least, this is how I see it. Marketing is one part of the company and the team effort makes it grow.

Chris says:
"I'm not sure why marketing would ever want to 'disinter-mediate' sales - to me that sounds organizationally counterproductive ad (and) destructive."

Currently, Marketing is using disintermediation (removing the middleman) in two ways:

In Transactional Selling Marketing is replacing "Sales" with a Buyer's Portal,run by Marketing and IT.
No Sales intervention needed!

In Enterprise Selling Marketing is attempting to "own" the Customer Relationship, from "Lead Generation" to Post Sales "Customer Service".
Sales' role is like the McDonald’s ‘sandwich builder’ deskilled, and is being reduced to responding to flashing lights, bells, buzzers generated by CRM or SFA Software......No Sales Skill required!

I agree, this is a destructive Process, but it is taking place!

http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-sales-enablement-really-disabling...

So, I ask the question: Is Salesforce Automation Broken?

http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com/2010/09/sales-force-automation-broken.html

Chris says:
"I'm not sure why marketing would ever want to 'disinter-mediate' sales - to me that sounds organizationally counterproductive ad (and) destructive."

Currently, Marketing is using disintermediation (removing the middleman) in two ways:

In Transactional Selling Marketing is replacing "Sales" with a Buyer's Portal,run by Marketing and IT.
No Sales intervention needed!

In Enterprise Selling Marketing is attempting to "own" the Customer Relationship, from "Lead Generation" to Post Sales "Customer Service".
Sales' role is like the McDonald’s ‘sandwich builder’ deskilled, and is being reduced to responding to flashing lights, bells, buzzers generated by CRM or SFA Software......No Sales Skill required!

I agree, this is a destructive Process, but it is taking place!

http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-sales-enablement-really-disabling...

So, I ask the question: Is Salesforce Automation Broken?

http://brianmaciver.blogspot.com/2010/09/sales-force-automation-broken.html

In our company, the sales person is the guardian of the relation between our company and the customer's company. After all, people will do business with people. No mather what we do, we need a middle man that has enough knowledge of the products and solutions we propose to trigger the interest in the eye of the customer.

Of course, we have a team of specialists and we do business with partners that have their own specialists. Never the less, I don't think that we have to remove the sales person form the equation. He is close to the customer, know him, his business, his needs and challenges. Therefore, the sales person is a great advisor to him.

I don't understand why you would want to take him off the equation. Marketing gives him the tools he need to conclude, but without the strategic knowledge of the sales person, I'm not quite sure that there would be success and progress. One needs the other and both need the leadership and hability to deliver of the rest of the team, in the company.

By the way, my English might not be the best in town... I'm just a French Canadian, after all...

Nic,
I agree completely with your points on "So it's not marketing disinter-mediating selling, its leadership dis-enabling or de-facilitating the successful adoption and execution, assuming of course there was a business case."

There are a whole host of CEO's coming back from Dreamforce with the "answer". Just buy some software and all your Cost and Revenue Problems will disappear.

As Tamara Schenk says: "A fool with a tool is still a fool!"

I find it harder than you to find “Independent” research, much less “Validated” research. Mostly the research is anecdotal and/or survey based. Put it another way you wouldn’t approve a Pharmaceutical based on anecdotes and customer surveys. If in practice it didn’t work you would not first blame the Patient for incorrect use, without evidence!

Most of the research finds what it’s looking for, and when it doesn’t find the “right answer”, then it blames “adoption and execution” or in other words you are “not using it correctly, otherwise it would work.”

At big IT despite hard numbers, the belief remained that:
“if only Sales would implement and execute as per the Software, then it would work”. Or, would it?

I believe that you are right, Nic
"Another reason that good sales people won't
and shouldn't be disinter-mediated by good marketing."

I guess I worry more about the not so good ones ;-)

sales is the part of marketing as per theories, Marketing draft the stratergies, sales will follow those stratergy. As experts said "I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard". all the activities we do is kind of selling it will not end until our thinking(Marketing) stops. so both marketing and selling goes hand by hand.

http://www.nichesuite.com/

Thank you for selecting that answer Brian.

Marketing has the responsibility of speaking to the whole available market and DIFFERENTIATING your product/service from everyone else's -- and moving them to prefer yours over the others. Marketing begins on day one and should never end. Period.

Sales picks up the baton somewhere along the line as, one by one, individuals become persuaded enough by marketing to hold up their hand and invite further information and/or interaction — which is when Sales picks up responsibility for moving them forward to a final sale.

Many if not most companies blur the above distinctions, however, which is why there is so much dysfunction and misunderstanding between sales and marketing.

Al Shultz
http://www.alshultz.com

In the simplest sense, "marketing" is the process (involving all external impingements, including sales, on customers) by which the company and its products are presented to, and glorified for, the buying public (public includes everyone, including companies). "Sales" is the process by which a customer is induced to pay for the company's product.

I beleive that first, you have to identify what you want to sell. It could be a product, a service, an idea or all three of them. Than, you have to identify who you want to sell to. It could be an actual customer or a new customer. At the very moment you engage with your targetted audience, every efforts you do to present what you have to sell must be marketing. It has to appeal and answer to a specific need. You first have to convince that customer that you and your team are those who can answer this need. The main idea is to get only one result: SUCCESS.

I also beleive that there is no purpose to marketing unless you have something to sell, either a product, a service, an idea or all three of them. And I strongly beleive that whatever you have to sell must come to enrich a customer's experience. Therefore, marketing is the definition of every efforts to sell something.

While selling’s definition has remained unchanged, marketing has become blurred.

Etymologically, marketing includes all of the activities of buying and selling; one umbrella that covers all business operations. One of the few companies that does business according to this age old definition is perhaps the most successful and most impactful company in history, Apple.

Marketing is more than a department that creates brand recognition and drives potential customers via graphics, collateral, and ads. This used to be called advertising. Changing the name to marketing minimizes and segregates.

Removal of product development, operations, accounting, customer service, support, and sales damages the customer experience. Every one of Apple's departments, bar none, understands and works to realize their mission of creating the "best personal computing experience."

In reality, sales is one segment of marketing as is advertising.

So where does advertising end and sales begin? When the relationship moves to conversation, it's time for the sales professionals - the deal makers.

In my opinion, marketing begins after the product has been sold. Marketing to me is the act of deepening the client relationship. Handling problems that may occur after the sale quickly and learning more about how I can meet my client's needs. The feed back I receive provides guidance to marketing as to what products to change and what new products to introduce.