“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
- Peter Drucker
Amen. If you have to sit there and work to sell it, there’s a marketing department somewhere that’s at fault.
Read Tom Asacker’s letter to Tom Peters to find out where the whole Sales vs. Marketing thing went oh-so-wrong. (Good stuff.)
Absolutely. I wish more “salespeople” would engrave that on their foreheads so that they are reminded of its truths each morning! Thanks for sharing the quote…
Have you ever walked out of a clothing store because the salesperson was rude? Even though the shirt was the right size, colour and price… you thought to yourself “I’m not giving my money to you or your employer.”
People don’t buy widgets, they buy experiences. Those experiences include relationships. In both B2B and B2C, those relationships are often with salespeople.
Drucker was right that marketing should be user focused on just channel focused. But I’m not sure he was wading into the sales v marketing tension in the way you’ve suggested.
[...] Sales vs. Marketing — 6:01am via Google [...]
Thanks so much for sharing this! Just had a sales/marketing meeting, and came away with this exact conclusion: Our marketing needs to support our sales (and vice versa!) in a more balanced mix.
[...] (Thanks to Olivier Blanchard) [...]