Many organizations prefer to group Sales and Marketing together. The head of such a combined organization typically has SVP of Sales and Marketing in their title. The executive presides over two very different organizations. But which one are they? Are they a sales person or a marketing person? The truly rare bird has been both in their career. I am proud to say that I am one of those birds. I began my career as a highly successful B2B sales person for a subsidiary of a Fortune 1000 company, selling CD-based training programs to corporate safety directors, industrial hygienists, and human resources leaders. Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I sold the biggest deal in the product line’s history. So I know what it takes to put a capture team together, to shepherd a deal from initial contact to service delivery, and to ask for the order. I’ve done it numerous times. The marketing aspects of the job – creating the sales tools, developing the campaigns, and running the events – held more interest for me, so I focused on marketing as a career path. Those 3+ years as a sales person were the best education a marketer could ask for.

Back to sales and marketing. Not every sales person is a marketer, and not every marketer is a sales person. These two vital roles are often confused in the organization. Which becomes increasingly clear in every job search I’ve undertaken. Read the job description, not just the title. Jobs that are posted as “Director of Sales and Marketing” are usually sales reps that are required to do their own lead generation. Such roles do a disservice to the companies and ultimately the employee. Similarly, I applied to a “Marketing Director” position with an outsourcing firm. The description in the posting sounded like a great fit. It described developing marketing plans, creating sales tools, segmentation, budgets, campaigns, and events. But when I called the company to follow up on my application status, I got an earful. The HR person said they are looking for someone to call on companies within a territory to sell their services. She said the Marketing Director is expected to have their own rolodex of prospects to call on, and should make at least 50 outbound calls and 50 outbound emails a day. Sounds like a sales position, doesn’t it? I was told that they titled the position “Marketing Director” because sales people cost too much. So the solution is to bolt a marketing title onto a sales role, save some money, and maybe nobody notices. Sales and marketing, all the same, right?

Truth is, sales and marketing are different roles. The relationship is symbiotic. Not to oversimplify but Sales people need a pipeline, a credible product/service to sell, and the right sales tools to make their quota. Marketing, in turn, is the provider of pipeline, visibility, sales tools, and (in some organizations) the product. The success of the two roles are inextricably linked. Sales cannot sell without Marketing laying the ground work, and Marketing cannot be effective if Sales does not sell using what Marketing provides.  One, but not the same.

This is Part One of a series…