Marketing

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Business Finance

Description

What is the definition of marketing? What are the benefits and drawbacks of incorporating marketing into the sales function of an organization? Do you think that marketing should be included as part of the sales organization within a company? 

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Explanation & Answer

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

  • Small businesses often use a single word to cover their marketing, sales, advertising, public relations and promotions functions. A business might refer to marketing communications, such as advertising, public relations and promotions, using one of those words, or call those activities “marketing.” It might put all marketing, sales and marketing communications activities under a “sales” umbrella. True marketing consists of the “Four Ps” of product development, pricing strategies, place of sales and promotions. The marketing department uses customer research to develop products, set the prices, create a brand, choose distribution channels and develop communications messages. Sales departments then use the work of the marketing staff as they make their calls.

  • turf wars

  • When a small business with few formal marketing activities tries to add them to an existing sales department, this can lead to confusion as to who works for whom. A sales manager might decide that he knows what features customers want, what prices the marketplace will bear and which sales methods are best for distributing the product. The marketing manager might believe she is the upfront research person who tells the sales manager and his staff what needs to be done. If you decide to add marketing functions or merge existing marketing staff into a sales department, let everyone know the totem pole and who is in change


  • Skilled sales people might know very little about market research, pricing strategies, advertising, PR, promotions, social media, creating distribution channels and developing and maintaining a brand. If you ask your sales team to handle these functions, you might see them make mistakes that can damage your business. Consider hiring contract professionals to work with your sales staff on creating various marketing strategies instead of asking your sales staff to develop them.

  • The more research and analysis you need before you can take advantage of potential new markets, respond to a competitor price change or develop marketing messages, the less time you’ll spend on sales. This will be especially true if you have salespeople trying to figure out marketing methods. At small companies with experienced sales staff, marketing research and planning might not be necessary. Asking your salespeople to justify their actions with research and reports can lead to morale problems as well as reduced revenues. Salespeople often focus on their short-term commissions, with sales their ongoing priority. Making your reps take time to develop long-term marketing strategies leaves staff with less time to prospect new accounts, and service existing accounts and can lead to longer order fulfillment, decreasing customer satisfaction.


  • Marketing costs money, spent on focus groups, surveys, market research, product testing, test mailings and customer satisfaction activities. If you put marketing into the sales department without qualified marketing professionals handling those duties, you might take more time to accomplish these tasks, and/or your untrained staff might make mistakes. Keeping marketing separate from sales, using trained marketing professionals to handle these task will help ensure quality control and improved productivity and efficiency.



Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_7561112_drawbacks-incorporating-marketing-sales.html


Anonymous
Really useful study material!

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