Marketing and Sales Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Marketing and Sales - Essay eventIt is for this reason that marketers and salespeople alike, focus on integration and alignment of the two functions and a greater focus on the last objective, rather than departmental goals. The American Marketing Association defines merchandising as Marketing is the activity, ring of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.(American Marketing Association 2008) Sales is largely a subset of trade and focuses on the delivering and exchanging part of the paradigm. It also involves maintaining cordial working relationships with clients, partners and customers all across the society. Marketing is broad consideration that also encompasses sales and merchandizing. In context of a small business, there are stark differences amongst the two concepts. The core focus of the marketing process includes Discovering the products, service s or ideas to be implemented. Producing products with the ideal features and timbre that cater to the target market. Correctly pricing the product. Promoting the product through several techniques to allow the message to expand to maximum people. Selling and delivering the product to willing customers. It is clear that selling is just one of the activities of the entire marketing process. It essentially involves effort to implement the plan and make the actual sale. All marketing activities support the eventual(prenominal) objective of magnifying sales. It must be noted that it is extremely important that marketing and sales activities are adjust in directions that complement rather than ways that fight (Atkins & MBA 2009). Some of the key differences in the way marketing and sales are done are A marketer looks at the decision qualification aspect of the spectrum. He empathizes with the customer by identifying needs, wants, deciding on the target market, positioning the brand, promoting and taking otherwise steps that communicate to the customer that the product is designed specifically for him and that he should consider its purchase. A seller, by contrast, focuses on the execution state after the work has been done by the marketer. His main focus is on reaching targets, achieving goals and focusing on numbers. He also needs to ensure the timely availability of products for customers. enormousness of Aligning Marketing and Sales In many companies and small business, the personnel and actions of sales and marketing contradict each other significantly. Sales people accuse marketers of being unaware of the actual needs of customers or overestimating the buying power of customers resulting in overpriced or unneeded products. They argue that marketers then expect them to recall sales revenue with such redundant and overpriced products. Such decision making leads to deviation from the ultimate objective of maximizing profits and hinders growth in sales num bers. Marketers, in contrast, suggest that salesmen have a very shortsighted focus on individuals and short term sells rather than looking at the larger picture. This alienates the firms from prospective long run profitability and stable revenue. Furthermore, the limited knowledge they have about the strategical decision making involved in coming about the final product makes them vulnerable to misinterpreting the gist of the product and its