I have heard this one before. It is a comment reflecting the importance and personal pride of many sales professionals. Yet, I am left with a question. Is it really true?
They’re the one’s creating the opportunities and closing the sale through superior techniques, training, personal selling skills, etc. Of course, there is more than a little truth to this. Much of what we associate with corporate value, the company’s intrinsic worth, can be boiled down to a magic number called sales. And many companies are completely lost without a dedicated staff of sales representatives.
Yet it leaves me wanting for more, as it does many others who concern themselves with marketing. Harvard’s Ted Levine puts the counterpoint in succinct terms: “The goal of marketing is to make sales obsolete.” Which sounds a little harsh (even to me). Must these two points of view exist in such stark polarity? Sales! Marketing! Sales! Marketing! Each proponent quietly suggesting the other needn’t make so much of itself. In many companies the two disciplines fight it out during every budgeting cycle.
My own take on it is to say that we all exist on a vast ocean of economic activity which contains many fish. Lots of species and organisms thriving or not depending on the conditions of the hour. One such company depends on vigorous sales activity to generate its bottom line; another seeks it through effective marketing with far less attention paid to having a sales staff to differentiate itself. There are many combinations in the vast expanse of companies, selling B2B or B2C, through intermediaries and channel partners, with high tech goods and services which require personal presentations to products sold direct. Way too many fish to categorize so easily.
Yet sales can overemphasize their point that nothing happens until a sale is made. Because it is the outcome everyone wants, it may become the fixed center in how the thinking is done.
I have also come to appreciate Ted Levine’s famous line, i.e. marketing if done effectively will sell the product so well you won’t need a sales force. The product sells itself.
Greg,
Thanks for writing about this. My thought is that some use this precept to confront the brutal reality that no amount of operational proficiencies within a company mean squat until a sale is made. This is true enough. However, it is merely a reflection ego to carry that to the point that the role of salesperson is exalted above all others. Boiled down, a sale is a transaction resulting from the submission a purchase order from the customer to a company.
It is this transaction that is critical to the kicking off of all other operational activities in a company and not necessarily the supreme value of the role and title of salesperson.
Sometimes the rainmaking occurs in unlikely places. I, for example, used to work as a technical resource for a company; meaning not officially in sales. Yet I routinely played a critical role in net new bookings. The reason I did this is because I am motivated by the above reality. Until a sale is made, there was nothing for me to do.
Look at the dairy industry. The first milk routes which mass distributed homogenized milk were sold by salesmen in the field. Today, not so much. A national ad from the dairy council is about all there is to selling milk these days. No doubt an example of marketing making sales obsolete. But I do not believe that marketing makes field sales obsolete by brute force or superior capability. I believe this is more of a natural progression in the effort to position products in the marketplace and a brand becomes established. It is only after the brand is established that mass marketing can be effective in driving sales on its own. And it is the effort in the field which builds the momentum for this.
-mike
-mike
Thank you for putting some fresh thinking into this. When I first wrote the post I was thinking about the times I had a sales executive on the other side of the desk who kept his marketing folks whipped into line on the subject of sales, and its overwhelming importance, with this particular statement or attitude. Indeed if that’s how the boss thinks, why would anyone try to argue? I grew a little frustrated by the assumption, however, and have used Ted Levine’s quote (which I have had some trouble tracking down by the way) as a come-back when pressed about the value of marketing. Sometimes a new client will look surprised in hearing a strong statement on marketing, when it has always seemed to them to be such a subjective, intangible process.
Nice to hear from you. Who knows? Maybe there’s more to chew on with this.
Best…
Greg
Even if marketing sells the product. It is technically still a sale. A sale is made by the company whether a live person makes it or a TV Ad..it is still a sale.
Someone has to sell the marketing plan to management, someone has to sell the marketing vehicle. If nothing ever sells the marketing is unsustainable on its own. I could go on and on with scenarios that always lead back to a sale.
So, Thomas Watson was correct in his statement that nothing happens until a sale is made. http://nothing-happens-until-a-sale-is-made.com/?p=8
I think there’s a question of voice and tonality which applies here. Sales and marketing should never be seen as antagonists. That would simply be too extreme. Perhaps it’s a little bit closer to friendly rivals? Each one seeking the same end through different means?