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Confusing Marketing with Sales

Question: "In the Blackblot Strategic Product Manager™ course that I attended there is a bullet point in the training slides that refers to 'Confusing Marketing with Sales'. Could you please expand on this topic?"

Sales is about personally interacting with and persuading potential customers to buy the product. Sales is all about forming a personal relationship that is based on trust. Many people will buy a product (they know little about) if they trust the salesperson. Conversely, people will not buy a product (they know much about) if they distrust the salesperson. When sales interaction is concerned, the customer's decision making process is based more on emotion than on information.

Marketing is a function that serves to inform and educate target markets about the value and competitive advantage of a company and its products. Marketing is focused about conveying information. That information can be conveyed or presented in many different ways.

People confuse Marketing with Sales because during a sales interaction there is an exchange of information about the company and product. However, that information exchange is not the dominant component in the customer's decision making process.

Finally, some people confuse Marketing with Advertising. Advertising is non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media. Advertising is only one of many tools that Marketing uses to convey information to the target markets. Hence, Sales, Marketing, and Advertising are all very different things.