100 Questions on Marketing Management (26): Is marketing more advanced than sales?

Now the 2020 graduation season has basically come to an end, but my friends (responsible for campus recruitment) have already sounded the clarion call for 2021. In the recruitment lists of many companies, sales personnel are often in greatest demand and account for the largest proportion, while marketing personnel are relatively rare. Although the two positions belong to the same department in many companies - the marketing department, silly There are also many applicants and recruiters who are confused.

So here, I would like to clarify this issue first. Marketing generally includes brand publicity, product promotion, strategy formulation, channel sales, customer service, and a series of tasks related to the market, customers, competition, etc. And sales are often just one part of it. Do you think that's it? If that's the answer, then the world is a boring place.

Let me talk about the positioning issues I see between sales and marketing. In fact, it’s not that employees are confused. Many companies have vague positioning of departments and functions. Some even use whichever one sounds good. I even saw a college student who just joined the job as the product marketing director. The company thinks that the name doesn’t matter. If you give it casually, the employees will feel that it is a honor.

1. It’s said to be marketing, but actually it’s sales

2. It’s said to be sales, but in fact it’s all about marketing

3. Marketing has Maybe he is just a handyman

4. Sales may be responsible for most of China

? In fact, it is a problem of the company's positioning of the marketing department. Nowadays, many companies actually do not have a "market" Functional, because it is in the early stages of entrepreneurship or there is no clear brand positioning. In 2019, I gave lectures for a company that made lighting components. The boss was named Cao. He was young and promising. The people who started the business with him were also his former colleagues. After class, their team specially invited me to dinner and wanted to talk about the core competitiveness of the company. Mr. Cao felt that his marketing team had insufficient marketing skills, lacked negotiation skills, lacked project promotion, and the public relations for major customers was even more unsatisfactory. Instead of answering his question directly, I told a story.

I have a friend who wants to go hiking with a group and climb mountains. For this purpose, he ran every day to train his physical fitness, did fitness exercises to train his muscles, and spent money to purchase professional mountaineering equipment. With everything ready, he embarked on the journey. On this hike, they were divided into several groups, heading towards the same destination from different routes. The group formation was voluntary, and they were well-equipped and strong, and they were grouped together as soon as they looked at each other. After walking for almost a whole day, they finally reached their destination before the sun went down, but they were not Number One. Number One had already started a fire and cooked noodles in the camp. Let’s look at the first team. They have ordinary Decathlon equipment and several people are tall and thin. They are fat and thin, which does not fit the image of a champion at all. But after careful inquiry, I found out that there were two senior travel friends here. They had walked this route no less than five times, and they were extremely familiar with side roads and small roads. The shortest route my friends calculated using a map was a vertical distance, but it required going up and down several hills. The first team seemed to have chosen the farthest route, but actually walked the least. And there are some familiar villagers or shops along the way, which is very convenient for resting and eating.

? In fact, this is very similar to corporate market operations and promotion. The most advanced production equipment, high-quality employees, and seemingly correct decision-making processes are no match for the in-depth understanding of the market and the accuracy of process nodes. control, as well as years of accumulation of industry experience. This friend of mine is lucky. After all, he still has good equipment and is fully self-sufficient. Think about it, how many of today's sales staff rush out with a product manual, no strategic guidance, no industry knowledge training, no customer cases, and no solutions to customer needs. It's like asking my friend to climb a mountain with only a bottle of water. If he doesn't die, he will be a hero. For Mr. Cao's company, if it wants to develop faster, it needs to start considering professional marketing personnel, positioning brands and products based on the characteristics of the company, and specifying strategies and strategies based on the market.

? Having said so much, in one sentence, sales require strategies, tactics and weapons to conquer the country. What is needed in the market now are almost all Li Yunlong-style sales team leaders who can produce their own supplies, develop their own regions, and build their own teams. But there are too few Li Yunlongs, and you will find that such handsome talents are rare. Enterprises need to pay attention to the support and guidance of sales, but the market serves sales and sales serves customers, so there is no question of who is higher.