[chiefalchemist]

> You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast.

Close, but not quite.

Marketing is the brand, the image, points of differentiation, etc. It's the message.

Advertising is the broadcast. It's how the message is communicated. It's the medium.

Marketing + advertising = prospects and leads.

Sales is the last mile. It takes the results of marketing + advertising (i.e., leads and prospects) and guides those to closing.

Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not talking.

Sales is

[windexh8er]

> Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not talking.

I've been in pre-sales for about 8 years now. From the vendor and reseller side. Mostly on the technical side (SE) but I also know the process side of the account executive (AE) very well at this point.

Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer. If a customer is always telling me what they need from me then I'm not providing any value. And, honestly, it's very rare to find a customer who's ahead of a good sales team. We have full access to PMs, internal business units and access to far more insight to our bits and pieces than any reseller or customer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying customers can't be experts. But I'm here to know and bring things to the plate that they just can't.

Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than listening to them outright. I've found paths for the customer that has helped them avoid making mistakes, saved them money or improved their operations through paths they hadn't considered or didn't know existed. Good sales teams work hard across the board through strong technical positioning as well as strategic deal creations.

There are sales teams that rinse and repeat for every interaction and then there are sales teams that are looking to help their customers, trying to find where the wins are for the prospect. I've walked away from deals by telling a customer we weren't a fit for them. Sales gets a bad rap, but there are some of us out there that walk into every conversation not with the only intent of closing quota, but trying to make a positive impact.

[sitkack]

> Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than listening to them outright.

Listen is a big word, one has to take all meanings into account.

[chiefalchemist]

> Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer. IYes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer.

But you don't know where the customer is trying to go...you don't know their pain...you don't know their priorities...

Without listening.

[windexh8er]

I realize this. Which is exactly why I said that "Yes, you need to listen". The parent comment responded to implied that was the only way.

If you don't listen you can't do what I stated above. And if you can't do what I stated above then you're not going to be able to help the customer and, ultimately, not be all that successful in sales.

Case in point... I had a customer years ago about to spend roughly a million dollars on a remote site upgrade architecture we had been jointly working on for about 6 months. In the background I was tracking a new product that would make their initiative cheaper and had both better ROI and performance specs due to refreshed hardware.

I made sure to present this, get all the information in front of the customer, engage in discussions using our PM and derive a strategic deal that would save them money over the three year term for buying a new product early.

They didn't do it. My counterpart appreciated the option even though it would have slipped their project by 2 months. Him and I are still friends even though I've moved on since then, but the moral of the story is he still brings that up because, in hindsight, he said he should have trusted our proposal. They spent more, got less and had to upgrade earlier due to unforeseen circumstances. Part of it was bad luck, the other part was a cognizant decision he made against the sales team better judgement.

I listened. I knew the customer very well, in fact. But I had knowledge and experience with the products that outstripped his for navigating this situation. That's how a good sales team operates.

[chiefalchemist]

I wasn't disagreeing. Simply trying to summarize.

[gk1]

That definition is very—let’s say—unique. In my 7+ years of marketing I have never met anyone or read anything that put advertising outside of marketing. It’s even in the academic “4P” definition of marketing (“Promotion”).

[rvba]

The funny thing is that in most consumer faced products advertising is generally outsourced to a media agency that does all the work: both creative and media buying (say TV ads, press).

Obviously for software and B2B it is a bit different, because budgets are often smaller and there is more pressure for A/B testing if there is any Return on Investment.

For me "promotion" is more like "price strategy", but they put the word into the 4P since it fits nice.

[chiefalchemist]

Marketing is the message.

Advertising is how that's communicated.

Using a billboard or a TV advert is not marketing.

Of course, marketing needs to be advertized. Else you'd just be sitting around a confernce table all day. Sooner of later the (marketing) message will need to be...advertised.

And yes, the medium can be the message. But a magazine advertisement is not a brand style guide. Tradeshow swag is not a tag line.

It not a question of placement - inside or out - it's simple proven definitions.

[gk1]

You’re welcome to dream up your own definitions, but then don’t patronize others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

[chiefalchemist]

Note the opening five words:

"Advertising is a marketing communication..."

Your tone is unnecessary and off-target. The above quote from line one is exactly what I said.

You don't just wake up, roll out of bed, and advertise. Well, you can but waste a ton of money. In any case, that message needs to be crafted. That's marketing. Advertising is how you disseminate that "plan."

Logo - marketing, not advertising.

Style guide - marketing, not advertising.

Positioning of the brand - marketing, not advertising.

And so on.

Marketing is the plan. How you wish take and place your brand / product to market. Advertising is the communication of that to thd market. Advertising is what happens when the meeting ends and its time to engage the market.

Marketing = what we have to say and who we wish to say it to.

Advertising = Got it. Let's see what tools we have to best make that happen.

No dreams. That is how it happens.

[sitkack]

Folks are getting bound up in shallow semantics in this whole thread and are missing the nuance in your distinctions.

[pidg]

It's not shallow semantics when what they're saying does not reflect the way these terms are used by many (most?) professional marketers.

[pkalinowski]

Putting advertising outside of marketing is not a nuance.

Advertising is part of marketing.

[chiefalchemist]

They're reading what they want to read and have failed to substantiate their position otherwise. One link to Wikipedia? Which only confirmed that was said.

It's simple. It's called Advertising for a reason. The outputs are called Advertisements for a reason. Whether that's within Marketing's "power grab" or not is not really relevant.

[skmurphy]

A conversation involves both listening and talking. Good sales people know that they have to "diagnose before they can prescribe" which means they must elicit symptoms and confirm need and fit with product capabilities. Really good sales people recommend other products when theirs is not a good fit. As the deal size goes up you do much more listening than talking.

Many firms that don't advertise--or do very little advertising--and are still able to generate leads, that's why it's normally included in marketing as one of many channels.

Effective marketing people also talk and listen to customers.