Explore Sales & Marketing

What is Sales and Marketing?

Marketing is the strategy used to develop a product, build a relationship with the consumer or desired audience, and sell the product. It involves a sequence of deliberate steps which include identifying the target audience and then researching the needs and desires of these customers to appeal to them and have the customers invest. Marketing uses intentional avenues to introduce and sell products to consumers. These avenues include commercials, magazine ads, and even Instagram reels. A lot of thought goes into making these avenues appealing.

There are a plethora of avenues in which marketing occurs. Some of the most familiar include digital marketing, social media marketing, and brand management marketing, but these are only a few. Understanding how marketing works benefits businesses in drawing a customer to the product or service available.

While sales and marketing work together to accomplish the same goal, they are not one and the same. Sales, unlike marketing, refers to processes that lead to goods and services being sold. Sales are the link that manages the relationship with a customer that was first initiated with the marketing strategies. If the salesperson or strategies are successful, the customer will find their need, want, or desire fulfilled by investing in the product or service sold.

Sales, like marketing, relies on strategies and understanding the customer. Due to the wide variety of products and services available to consumers, sales are often categorized into four types. These four types of sales include transaction, relationship, solution, and partnership. All of these types rely on the customer already having been drawn to the product or service through marketing strategies. Hence, marketing and sales build upon each other to accomplish a business's goal of successfully presenting a desirable product or service.