The difference between sales management and marketing

Thinking about studying business? Enrolling on a business course at foundation or degree level is a logical idea for anyone with dreams to set up their own company or organisation, and both sales management and marketing skills will certainly be important to learn. However, despite there being a certain amount of overlap between the two, there are some significant differences between sales management and marketing - and this article gives an overview of these differences.

Although both have the primary target to ensure and aid the success of a business, company, or organisation, sales management individuals/teams and marketing individuals/teams have quite different specific goals. Whilst the former works to persuade prospective buyers to spend their money on products or services, a marketing team will work to - both directly and indirectly - generate information or ‘buzz' about products and the company as a whole.

In even simpler terms marketers are typically concerned with reaching out to more custom while sales managers are more inclined to consider what happens when the customer is in the store. Of course, even the simple matter of the customer-purchasing process is actually a complex system - and it is the job of a sales management team to make as smooth and successful as possible. For certain products this may be a matter of implementing suggestive selling or up-selling techniques, whereas other services may benefit more from consultative selling.

While marketers must acknowledge budgets for advertising and generating buzz, sales management need to be concerned with the amount of products they need to sell, the cost of storage and staff, and being sure there are enough products to meet demand. The above aspects of sales management come during the sales planning stage, after the initial conception of the product.

Both a marketing and a sales management team will concern itself with reporting. Yet, while the marketing team will focus on the worth of certain types of advertising and promotion in response to how much of the product has been sold, the sales management team will report on the effectiveness of the sales team to investors and partners - in terms of key performance indicators and where the selling process can be streamlined in the future.

Sarah Maple is writing for Kaplan adult education about business courses.