Sales Advice for Marketing Campaigns.

[M.M. Hasan Parvez]

Sales and marketing don?t like each other. Most businessmen don?t know this, but it is a grim truth that will rear its ugly head in a large enough enterprise. Fortunately, that doesn?t always hinder their ability to get their respective jobs done, nor does the existence and success of one invalidate the other. In many ways, sales and marketing are essentially operating on the same wave length and are interchangeable to some small degree. Barring instances like an Effexor recall, there are few times when marketing?s job deviates too far from that of sales: convince the customer to buy what the business has to offer them.

For example, the guidelines that salesmen adhere to when making their pitches often end up being very good ones for constructing marketing campaigns. One is short-term and the other long-term, but the core ideas are the same.

Content is always key. In sales, as in marketing, the message being delivered should contain a number of elements. These are: the product, what it can do for the customer, and the core features. These must be presented in both a sales pitch and in a marketing campaign. No sales pitch is complete without mentioning what is being old, just as no marketing strategy is going to go very far if it doesn?t at least tell the customer what the offer can do for them.

Presentation is also important. While it is possible to deliver a sales pitch in a creepy monotone, it isn?t exactly the best way to go about it. The salesman should be lively and active, instilling faith in the product by his exuberance. The marketing should be the same. A bad presentation, one with no flash and no effort in it, is going to fail at the goal of attracting people?s attention. If the marketing can?t get that part of the job done, then it isn?t going to do well in the other aspects.

Don?t get too technical. A lot of amateur salesmen use technical terms and jargon to impress customers into buying something, but this is bad practice. Instead, try and keep things using layman?s terms, so the people can actually understand what?s going on. This applies to both marketing and sales personnel. If the marketing materials like posters and fliers are full of jargon and industry slang, then it won?t work because nobody can understand it. They?re just as likely to dismiss it as something not meant for them as they are to ignore it ? neither one is a good idea.