A Wise man's Quote

A wise man once quoted:

"Without a stint in Sales don’t even think of taking up a marketing Position!"

For all of you who don’t understand the Wiseman’s quote, I have only one thing to say...
Read on!
Consider you start a Product Company; you will have a nice supply chain, defining how your company runs its day to day operations. At one end you will have acquisition of raw materials, and on the other end comes the process of selling, the last but not the least.

Everyone buys. But how many people sell? Very few. And some people even go to the extent of considering Selling as a derogatory Verb! Actually, there is some sense and reasoning behind this statement as well.

A company has a mission or in common terms, a motive. In the same way, every employee will have his own too (within the company).Unfortunately there always exists a conflict of motives, between the various employees.

Take for example, consumer banking. The motive of the sales executive is to maximize the number of accounts he opens for the bank. His incentives don’t depend on the quality of the clients (but, of course there are protocols restricting the liberty to a certain extent).On the other hand, an investment advisor in the same bank has his incentive structure based on the investment influx he brings into the bank and the profits he generates for the bank through his investments. The salesman tends to wash his hands off the issue,the moment he gets the account opened without caring for the investment advisor and for the welfare of the company!

This motive mismatch doesn’t just stay within the employees, but transfers into a Client-Company mismatch as well. The salesman with selfish motives gets the account opened even without understanding the consumer's need and position. Once the account is opened, the investment advisor realizes that the customer acquired, is not the right one for him to maximize his gains and ill treats the client. This ends up in a bad relationship between the bank and its client!This example is just to showcase a conflict of motive existing in a corporate structure. But more importantly, we need to look at what exactly does sales mean to marketing?

Sales is the primary reason why marketing came to existence! The term, marketing the product was coined for describing the process of selling the product in the market. But, slowly as a corporation grew more sophisticated, the process of selling became complicated!

Once marketing came into existence to understand the complexities of trade and sell intelligently, it also started impacting other important aspects of a fully developed corporate. Sales became a mundane process. Marketing started divulging into Brand valuation, Customer relationship management and various other critical elements of the company and these issues also got embedded into the mission of the marketing function.

But for a moment, just take away sales and imagine where marketing stands! It’s a dead duck!

How many ever functions that marketing will handle with various levels of importance, Sales is where marketing should never ever lose focus on. It is sales that is the bread winner for the company. As an analogy, we can exist without Air Conditioner, but can we exist without air?

It’s really important that the marketing guys understand how their sales arm is functioning, to the fullest possible detail and take decisions accordingly. They should most importantly avoid a Motive conflict as discussed above.

So all you marketing guys make sure you don’t dump the importance of understanding the seller's perspective. The proof of the pudding is in eating, how ever attractive or aromatic the pudding is... :-)