The Entrepreneurs and Business Development
Sales & Marketing - a Basic Introduction

This and other articles which will follow this one, relating to sales and marketing have come about as a result of setting up iStadia’s Entrepreneurs and Business Development Club and the topics that it’s members wanted to discuss. Comment can be added on the forum within the Club (it will keep all the comments in one place) and any additional observations from those with relevant expertise or experience will be welcomed.

I’ve added a little bit about my experience at the end of this article so that you know that I have some kind of background in business.


Sales and Marketing – a Brief Introduction
Sales and marketing can be confusing and depending on how you look at it, they can overlap but largely this can come down to semantics which I do not want to get into. Most companies see sales and marketing as different and have different departments to represent them. For most of you however, it will be a matter of doing both but hopefully we can give you the means to plan your sales and marketing properly.

As I see it, Marketing is pervasive and should influence almost everything you do to develop your business whereas sales tends to be the activity you do at the end of the process when you need to conclude an agreement to do some work.

In essence marketing is about creating the proposition of what you do and the benefits derived from using your products or services. Not just what your product or service can do but how it is different from your competitors who supply the same, similar or complimentary products or services. Sales is concluding this process and depending on how good your marketing is will depend upon how much selling you have to do to conclude a deal/agreement. Sales is therefore about persuading and negotiating what you will finally do to provide that product or service. Of course if your marketing is weak then you will have to do everything as part of the sales process when you talk/meet your prospective client or customer. Even if you have been contacted by someone who has received a strong recommendation to talk to you (word of mouth), it is still important to go through with this process.

Here are a few definitions which are important from the point of view of at least getting a feel of what each is about. There is quite a bit of detail here which I will cover in more detail in topics which will follow this one. The idea is not to bombard you with too much information at this early stage. I am sure quite a few of you will have come across the following already but please bear with me whilst we try and cover the basics.

Marketing
Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations (Wikipedia).

Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function… It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view (Drucker).

Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research.

Therefore good marketing must be able to create a "proposition" or set of benefits for the end customer that delivers value through products or services.

Its specialist areas which should generally fall under a marketing plan or marketing strategy include:
• advertising and branding
• communications
• database marketing
• direct marketing
• event organization
• global marketing
• internet marketing including search engine optimization (SEO)
• market research
• public relations
• experiential marketing
• word of mouth

Sales
Sales are the activities involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity (Wikipedia).
The "deal is closed", means the customer has consented to the proposed product or service by making full or partial payment (instalments) to the seller.
Sales often forms a separate grouping in a corporate structure. Sales is considered by many to be a sort of persuading "art". Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way (Wikipedia).

Sales techniques
The sale can be made through:
• Direct Sales, involving person to person contact
• Proforma sales in effect asking for a quote
• Agency or channel based sales where an additional party does the final selling
• Consultative sales where consultants are brought in to look at the problem first and then advise a solution.
• Complex sales (large projects like power stations, infrastructure, enterprise IT solutions etc)
• Telesales (generally cold calling prospective clients or customers)
• Request for Proposal (RFP) is an invitation for suppliers, through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific product or service. An RFP is usually part of a complex sales process, also known as enterprise sales.
• Business-to-business (B2B) — Business-to-business sales are much more relationship based owing to the lack of emotional attachment to the products in question. Industrial/Professional Sales is selling from one business to another. In our case this is selling to another sports business or fitness center or selling services to a NGB or professional association.
• Business to consumer (B2C) involves direct contact with the users of your product or service – generally members of the public or elite/professional athletes.
• Indirect but with indirect contact – mail order, ecommerce

Sales Methods:
o SPIN Selling
o Consultative selling
o Solution selling
o Strategic Selling
o Sales Negotiation
o Reverse Selling

The sales and marketing relationship
Marketing plays a very important part in sales. If the marketing department generates a potential customers list, it can be beneficial for sales. The marketing department's goal is to bring people to the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations. In most large corporations, the marketing department is structured in a similar fashion to the sales department and the managers of these teams must coordinate efforts in order to drive profits and business success. Driving more customers "through the door" gives the sales department a better chance by ratio of selling their product to the consumer.

Marketing potentially (and theoretically) negates the need for Sales
Some sales authors and consultants contend that an expertly planned and executed marketing strategy may negate the need for outside sales entirely. They suggest that by effectively bringing more customers "through the door" and enticing them to contact you, sales organizations can dramatically improve their results, efficiency, profitability, and allow salespeople to provide a drastically higher level of customer service and satisfaction, instead of spending the majority of their working hours searching for someone to sell to. This is not directed at ecommerce (Amazon, Ebay) where this is clearly the case as everything is done without a sales force.

To Follow
In the next few topics we will deal with a breakdown of what marketing is likely to mean to you and those aspects which you should look at more closely as opposed to others. We will then do the same with sales. During this process aspects of pricing will also be covered.

Keith Irving - some Background
I have an MBA from London Business School and ran a group of manufacturing companies involved in the electronics, telecoms, plastics and automotive sectors. These companies which were spread across England and Scotland would be classed as SME’s (small and middle sized enterprises) with around 200 employees. I worked my way up from Production Manager to Finance Director to MD and then Group MD over a 17 year period (1980 to 1997). At some point or other I have been directly involved in running sales, marketing, HR, finance, accounting, manufacturing, IT, logistics and some of the all encompassing stuff like business planning, dealing with turnarounds, strategy and acquisitions.

Stages of company growth I have dealt with include start-ups, growth, stagnation, and as mentioned above turnarounds*.

Since leaving the group in 1997, I have started up 3 service based businesses involved in headhunting, psychometrics and performance psychology, and iStadia (with Rob).
I guess the one thing I would like to point out at this stage is that whilst I have considerable experience, I continue to learn from almost everyone I meet and every situation I encounter and nowhere more so than going back to Brunel University in 2004.

*Turnarounds for those that don’t know are businesses which are turned round from losing money (usually losing it consistently and close to bankruptcy) to making a profit.