Sales and communication tools for marketing to Build Business
Sales purely mean the selling of a product or service. The person involved in sales is supposed to sell whatever product or service is available to sell with the company. Marketing can be termed as marketing or communicating a product, a service, or a brand amongst a segment of people or areas where that company can make maximum profit. The purpose of marketing is to sell, promote, or spread awareness about a service or product.
Meaning of communication tools for marketing
Marketing is creating a strategy and awareness under different conditions by communicating or, in modern terms advertising the value and benefits of products and services to a particular segment of customers and in a particular market. Target markets, market segmentation, and consumer behavior are a few different strategies and techniques for measuring the market. Different measures are used to maximize profits for a given product or service through marketing. communication tools for marketing are much more technical than sales.
One of the best communication tools for marketing strategies is ‘Word of Mouth’. It is also a very traditional way of promoting a product or service.
Meaning of Sales: communication tools for marketing
The sales team has an agenda of building relationships with either directly the customer or the agencies or channel partners to generate business by selling their products or services and generating maximum revenue for the company.
To sell smartly, any organization’s sales executive or relationship manager amends the products offered, the price or the service, the product, and the means and ways of communicating with the opposite party. However, sales is an extremely important part of the business for any organization. Every department of the organization works very efficiently to make sure they serve well, and on the basis of their planning and service, their sales team is able to perform well in selling. Only selling products and services can generate revenue for the company and the people working for and within the company.
Difference between Marketing and Sales
Now that we understand the meanings of the two terms, let’s look at the differences between communication tools for marketing and sales.
- Marketing is a range of activities that help sell products and services and build relationships with clients and agencies by determining needs expected in the future and strategizing the conditions to help the sales team. It promotes overall distribution and pricing of products and services to be offered by the company and fulfills the needs of the consumer.
Sales match consumer needs and demands with the products and services offered by the company by communicating the need and requirements of the product and services the company is selling. Meets the sales objective of the company and helps generate revenue.
- Marketing involves a lot of scrutinies done by the marketing team of the company with regards to the distribution of products and services, means of sales distribution, competitors, pricing of the products as per market trends, tracking sales, stock market, consumer behavior and of course budgets; all at a minimum expenditure to generate maximum profits for the organization.
Sales are purely one-to-one with either the consumer or the agencies.
- The marketing team of a company usually is involved in performing activities like researching the market of the product or the service, advertising as to how to market the product or the service of the company with the help of marketing communication tools, creating public relationships, servicing the customers to the best so that the consumer of the product or service is satisfied with the offering of the company.
Sales, on the other hand, are convincing the customer by creating a need for the customer to purchase the product or the service offered by the company.
- Marketing pulls its relationship with the client towards a long-term by serving well and analyzing their needs.
Selling is a short-term understanding of simply selling or pushing the product or service.
- Marketing guides the sales team in building a long-term relationship with its clients and maximize profits.
Sales are an output of the working of the marketing team.
Building a business and selling the right way to generate profitable revenue for the company is the agenda of every organization. In order to meet this agenda, the company uses different marketing strategies and sells accordingly with the help of marketing communication tools.
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Sales and importance of communication tools for marketing methods used by the management
A few sales and importance of communication tools for marketing methods used by the management of some top companies are given below:
1. Regular sales and marketing interaction
Marketing strategies depend on a number of analyses and research work; one of them is interacting with the sales team and knowing the issues they are facing in selling the products and meeting their sales targets. The marketing team of every organization needs to have a minimum of two to three people involved in collecting such data from the sales teams. Based on different locations and different customer segments, the marketing team can then put strategies and selling patterns in place to maximize business for that given location.
2. Sharing marketing communication strategy and research with sales
Any business and its progress is teamwork of the employees working in the organization. People in the organization work in different teams and all together work towards maximizing profits for the company. All the analyses, all the research work, and the outcome of the research work should be shared by the marketing team with the other departments of the company, especially with the sales team. Sharing research will help the teams understand the layback of being unable to meet sales targets and their competitors’ positions.
The marketing team should also use strategies to help the sales team perform better and share their strategies with the sales team.
3. Participation of the marketing team in sales
The marketing team specializes in various studies as they research and analyze the market on a regular basis. With the help of data, reviews and research, the marketing team comes to various conclusions to ensure that the company can perform better in selling its products and services in the market. One or two marketing team members should personally be involved or participate with the sales team in selling their products. This will help them in guiding the team and helping them sell better, build relationships, and increase future prospect sales. This activity will also help the marketing team member understand the difficulties the sales team faces in selling the product and service and offer a solution to their issues.
4. Training is very important for the sales
Training is an extremely important factor in any job in any profile because, if they do not understand, how will they explain the same to the customers of the agencies. Regular training and interactions between teams help in improving and polishing the skills of the employee involved in servicing the company. Unlike other training such as product, market, software, technical, etc, the sales team must undergo marketing training at regular intervals. Training and interactions with the marketing team will help the sales team perform better and deal with situations they haven’t dealt with appropriately. Training secession with the marketing team will also help them in understanding the market and the customers better with the help of data.
5. Communicating with data is more effective
Excel is an essential tool for creating and maintaining data. Preparing daily, weekly, and monthly MIS is very important as it helps keep track effectively and efficiently. The full form of MIS is Management Information System Report. This report can be helpful in saving, analyzing, reporting, and reusing data for various purposes and departments. Both the sales and marketing teams can create and save such data on a regular basis. This data can be used in analyzing and forecasting business in the future. Both the teams can talk via emails and other means of communication with the help this data to be more precise in putting forth their point and proving themselves, the reason being that data never lies, and one can trust data.
6. Sales and marketing rotation
People working in the central team or the head offices usually look at the business from a macro point of view, that is, as a whole, whereas people working in a sales team look at the business from his point of view or maximum from the point of view of a client or an agency. Both teams do not understand the logic or the reason behind the rules set and the reason for not performing as per the set process or rules.
The companies can set rotational jobs for both the sales and the marketing team; for example, a couple of members from the marketing team can come down to the location of the performing sales team, and a couple of members from the sales team can be sent to the head office to work for a month. By performing a simple rotation, they can understand each other’s roles and responsibilities and will not look down on each other. This will avoid ego clashes in the workplace. This also builds relationships and creates a bond between employees.
7. Feedback amid both sales and marketing
Feedback need not come just one way, i.e., from top to bottom, which means from marketing to sales; it has to be both ways. The marketing team of any organization might for sure have experts or specialists in marketing or communicating awareness about the products and services offered to the customers. However, the sales team creates a need among people to buy the same products or services. Hence, even the sales team might have brilliant ideas which might help the marketing team, and the organization is benefiting from them. Feedback options must be open and acceptable from both sides. Just like marketing has experts, even sales has experts. However, the marketing team looks at selling from a broader prospect and can suggest better ideas to the sales team to help them perform better.
8. Sales and marketing meets
The sales and marketing teams must interact via other means or reasons of communication tools for marketing techniques, such as emails (email marketing), phones, data exchange, etc. However, the organization must hold an annual or a half-yearly meet for both teams to come down together for a couple of days. This meet must hold an agenda that discusses critical issues faced by both teams along with resolutions and expectations of the teams from themselves and the other team. As these teams come together, they not only discuss important points and issues, but they also meet people from the other team they usually interact with on emails and over the phone. It helps develop a relationship and emotional bonding amongst the team; this helps both teams perform better as a team keeping their ego clashes and differences aside.
9. Work as a customer-centric team
The main motive behind every team in an organization is to perform better in their own expert ways to help the organization generate revenue. Performing not just as individual teams but also as an organization that has an entire unit of experts to sell better and add value to grow better and faster. Working as a team by keeping all ego clashes away and understanding each other’s point of view will help the organization and people involved in the growth of the organization progress and succeed.
Communication Tools For Marketing Conclusion
Marketing and sales are two different terms that are very closely knotted with each other. Marketing looks at business from a broader aspect, whereas sales looks at the business from a narrow aspect. They are both different at work. However, they need to work hand in hand with the organization to help the organization grow and progress in terms of selling its goods and services better to earn profitable revenues.
First Image source: pixabay.com
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