Integrating Sales and Marketing

Marketing and sales are often used interchangeably, but they are two different concepts, albeit somewhat similar.  However, it is easy to distinguish between the two.  Marketing is the process of attracting and keeping customers, while sales is the actual selling of the product to the customer.  In medium and large sized businesses, marketing and salespeople often do not work together, but it is critical to the success of a business for this to be so.Communication is key in any business, and it is especially essential between marketing and salespeople.  Salespeople have to incorporate the content on marketing campaigns in their sales pitches, and marketers have to set up their marketing campaigns to make it easy for salespeople to sell the product.  Without communication, none of this can occur, and lots of sales will be thrown away.  One of the reasons there is a lack of communication is that sales and marketing employees think that their jobs are the most important.  Everyone is equal in a company, however, and once that is realized, things will flow much smoother.In small businesses, marketing and sales operations are usually performed by the same person, or the business owner.  In this case, there are no communication problems because only one person is doing the work.  The entrepreneur will always integrate marketing and sales flawlessly because they are aware of everything that is happening and do not miss out on anything.  If large businesses could work like a single entrepreneur can, their sales would increase astronomically.Marketing and sales departments should not be separated, they should be integrated.  This way, all endeavors and campaigns would have aspects of both fields in their core, and general operations would flow smoother.  The initial integration would be expensive and costly, but like any business move, it would be a worthwhile investment.  New businesses should consider starting out in this manner, as doing so would eliminate the need to spend money to change later on.