Most marketing activities are in a service of selling product(s), so i wouldn't think of this activities separate. 4Ps of marketing mix are based around product(s) we are trying to sell. All in all, i don't see this separated.

Thank you Dr Vicevic for your valuable answer.

Marketing and sales are activities within organizations geared at increasing return on investment. Despite being intertwined, one important difference is the approach: Marketing must have a strategy in place which fits in with the corporate strategy and that is congruent with the financial, operations, R&D etc strategies. this would be at the strategic level and therefore overseeing a plan for securing a long-term relationship. Marketing therefore determines the nature of sales activities, which aim for matching customer demands with the products/services of the organization. most importantly, sales people need to feed back to the strategists customer satisfaction, complaints, likes and dislikes. Having said this, organizations should embark on scientific marketing research to understand what customers want and more importantly what they need.

In larger companies the Marketing function would be divided into other departments such as Sales, Market research, PR, Advertising etc, compared to a smaller enterprises, where these functions would usually fall under Sales. Although this is practical for these enterprises, from a theory-wise view it would be deemed to be covered by Marketing re; marketing mix.

Hope this helps

. above said are right, but in Pakistan, most of the firms mix these two strong components, marketing and sales are two totally different departments, marketing is something deals with marketing mix, market research, branding, consumer behavior and advertising and sales is something different, may be few can name it the same domain, mixing them both may helps the firm to save the money but, marketing is totally an separate domain and mostly firms compromise of the marketing and sales teams, that's why they can't satisfy the consumer.

Hi Mahfuz,

Marketing and Sales are two distinct functions within a firm with different orientations.

According to Kotler (2005, p.5) marketing can be defined as: "marketing is the delivery of customer satisfaction at a profit. The goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value, and to keep current customers by delivering satisfaction."

Marketing consist of four concepts:

[Starting point] (1) Markets

[Focus point] (2) Needs, wants, and demands

[Means] (3) Marketing offers (products, services, and experience)

[Ends] (4) Profits Through customer satisfaction

(4a) Value and satisfaction

(4b) Exchange, transactions, and relationships

In effect, marketing is a sales function that can identify large customer segments and their needs, wants and demands. Marketing can therefore approach groups of customers with the production and product concepts. Marketing views large groups of customers and perceives that they can stimulate the present or latent needs, want, and demands of these customers resulting in the sale of their product.

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The Selling concept:

According to Kotler (2005, p.15) the selling concept holds "that customers will not buy enough of the organization's products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. The concept is typically practiced with unsought goods - those that buyers do not normally think of buying, such as Readers Digest and double glazing".

The Selling concept consist of four concepts:

[Starting point] (1) Factory

[Focus point] (2) Existing products

[Means] (3) Selling and Promoting

[Ends] (4) Profits Through sales volume

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According to Kotler (2005, p.16) the marketing concept holds "that achieving organisational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do.".

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Marketing reasons from the markets to the firm, and how the firm could satisfy a present or latent need, want or demand of the market.

Sales reasons from the firm to the market, and how the firm could create a demand for an in first instance unsought good or service.

In sum, marketing and sales are two distinct functions in a firm because their view of the market is different. Marketing and sales can co-exist but that depend son the products that are being sold. Unsought products need a more interactive approach that pushes the products on to the market/customers. Wanted products can suffice with a more unidirectional and passive approach to the market/customers.

I hope that this helps.

Best regards,

Herman

Sales and Marketing are two distinctly different activities. Sales start with the concept that there is something to sell( Product/Service). This leads to an approach that tries to influence target customer through sales promotion, advertising, publicity etc. without considering the exact requirement of the customer. Marketing on the other hand, tries to understand the requirement of the customer first and then offer the Product/Service, thus creating market. This approach leads to building value for the customer and consequently higher customer satisfaction, resulting in customer loyalty. In short Sales is Product/Service oriented, whereas Marketing is customer oriented.

I agree with Mr. Dattagupta to a certain point. But I doubt if his assumption that marketing leads to a high(er) customer satisfaction and loyalty in relation to sales is true/provable. (I hope that I have understood his argumentation correctly.)

Both sales and marketing have similar objectives, to create a satisfied customer at a profit, employees in the sales profession also want a satisfied customer that may come back or spread a positive reference about the product/company.

A dissatisfied customer that bought a product from a sales person could ruin a company. Nowadays each customer can write on multiple internet sites his/her experience with a product or a company and can nullify all sales activities.

The difference, is the approach to this "satisfied customer at a profit".

Sales start at the factory/product/service and looks how this product can be sold in high enough volumes. Marketing starts at the market (segment) and tries to understand the (latent) customer needs and create products / services that satisfy this need.

Sales tend to be a more direct and one-to-one interaction, marketing tend to be a more indirect and one-to-many interaction.

Sales is oriented around the more unsought after goods, marketing is oriented around the sought after goods.

IF your customer is seeking for your product/service, than you can use the 4 P's (price, product, promotion, and place). Because you have "only" to differentiate your product in relation to your competitors. When your customer is not seeking your product more emphasis may be laid on the Promotion (sales promotion) part. You have to let the customer know that your product exist and you have to convince the customer that your product has added value for him/her.

Marketing and sales are closely related activities in companies and both of them should be Concerned with the marketing performance of a company

Let sales be viewed as one of the marketing activities, infact the one where the product exchanges hands.

Mafhuz,

This is an age old issue discussed the US. The term disconnect is often used to describe whether marketing and sales are integrated or not. As always it depends on the organization and in practice we see both significant integration as well as significant disconnect. I do suggest you join some of the Linked In blogs on sales as this question has been discussed in several of them recently and that gives you a source of industry opinion.

Yes, Marketing is product, price, place and promotion that includes advertisement, psersonal selling, sales promtion and PR.

Selling is one part of marketing.

There are already many excellent responses to the dichotomy of sales and marketing.  After many years of sales teaching and research I would state that the sales function is part of the firm's promotional area of marketing.  But, one has to define marketing as in different countries and cultures, sales is a word that has negative cultural implications.  Even in the west, salespersons are called account representatives and territory managers rather than salespersons.  Marketing tends to be more long-term in their analyses and plans while the sales function must think and act more short term to ensure that sales revenues meet company goals.  Marketing should support sales activities by coordinating advertisements and promotions and providing information about customers that will help the sales function succeed.  As many have pointed out, in larger firms there are more distinct marketing functions and it is difficult to get sales and marketing to cooperate unless they are located in the same work space.  In smaller firms the sales manager may also handle most or all marketing functions.

Thank you Dear Earl for your thorough and detailed comment.

Generally speaking, selling and marketing are not the same. Selling refers to the process of persuading a prospective buyer or consumer to buy the product or service.

Marketing refers to a broader collection of activities, such as what is called the marketing mix (four Ps), i.e. to get the right product, place, price and promotion in business.

“Marketing and sales are both aimed at increasing revenue. They are so closely intertwined that people often don’t realize the difference.....Nevertheless, marketing is different from sales and as the organization grows, the roles and responsibilities become more specialized”. 

To see the comparison chart of sales and marketing, look at the link here-under.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Marketing_vs_Sales

According to my experience, in large enterprises the sales (or CRM customer relationship management) process is a core process, whereas marketing is a support process.

The sales process defines the activities from (annual) planning of sales activities to market development, opportunity management, bid phase/ acquisition, order & contract management, post-sales activities.

Marketing comprises activities that support the sales organization with lead management, campaign management, marketing communication, loyalty programs, etc.

Both sales and marketing are executing the strategy defined in the management process Strategy Planning and the core process PLM Product Lifedycle Management. The strategy includes decisions like the strategic positioning in specified markets, Build/ Hold/ Harvest/ Divest for distinct product families, as well as the marketing mix - Product, Price, Placement (channels), Promotion.

Hi Mahfuz,

marketing activities are strongly connected with sales activities.

When we speak about marketing we have to see several parts of marketing: product development, service development, market research... and of course marketing communications. sales activities are strongly conected with all of them and specially with produsct and service development and marketing communications.

In telecom sector (and I believe similar situation is in all other sectors) product and service development have two-way conections with sales activities (forward and backward conections) and marketing communications must help to sales persons to present their products (let's say tariff models) and services (let's say VAS or Cloud services) to end customers.

Of course, I will need more time and space to discuss this very interesting question but I hope I was clear about connectivity between marketing and sales.

And all other parts of marketing have some conections with sales activities (such as marketing research - sales people use results of these researches for easier detecting property customer base)

Very best regards.

Igor 

In brief, sales is centered on customer attraction activities like display, packaging, services. etc. but marketing includes bigger activities e.g. procurement, storage, pricing, quality control, haulage etc.