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Selling as a Component of a Marketing Plan
When you cut right to the chase, the point of marketing is to generate sales leading to income and eventually profits. Knowing this you would think all companies would focus on the interactions between company staff and customers because, as they say, customers are the lifeblood of the business. Without customers and sales, there is simply no business.
All too often organisations see selling as the responsibility of the sales department or the telemarketing centre, and everyone else working for the business is in a strictly supportive role. This is an unfortunate viewpoint that can limit the ability of the organisation to grow and thrive. Selling is an integral component of a marketing plan which covers everything from direct customer contact to customer service.
What is important to realise is the fact customer service is a function of every single department within the organisation. For example, in the finance or credit departments, employees frequently talk to customers on the phone or communicate through email concerning payments on accounts. How efficiently and productively the communication is handled can have a direct bearing on whether that customer ever does business with the company again.
From that perspective, the accounts receivable clerk is a sales person when she discusses a past due amount on a bill. Senior management are sales persons every time they attend a professional meeting. The examples could go on and on. Each contact a member of the organisation has outside the business is a form of a “sales call”.
Selling and Marketing Make Great Teamwork
Selling involves a number of marketing tactics.
- Generating customer leads
- Presentations
- Promotions distribution
- Customer research and surveys
- Selling plans
- Analysis of competitor demographics
- Distribution of marketing materials
- Sales lead and customer inquiries
- Liaison between outside market niche and internal organisational departments
When you consider the entire selling function, it’s easy to see how it fits into an overall marketing plan. It’s also clear that the selling function is much broader than just asking someone to buy a product or service. Selling is a mixture of promotion, presentation, sale closing, and follow-up.
An organisation that takes a restricted view of selling as an independent function within the business most likely has never developed a comprehensive marketing plan. One of the goals of sales management training is and employee sales training is to broaden the viewpoint of the role of sales within a strategic marketing plan.
Successful selling offers a variety of useful and critical elements.
- Serves as information link which communicates customer needs and desires to business
- Assists with developing customer loyalty
- Provides basis for effective promotional campaigns
- Provides relevant and practical market information for successful organisational teams
- Develops customer relationships that lead to repetitive sales
- Promotes company integrity
- Promotes high quality customer service
- Provides market insight
Making sales is very different than selling as a marketing function. Though you can say selling is a component of marketing, it is a central element around which all other marketing functions revolve.