Marketing is all about building the right perception and Sales is the grit behind this suave perception. While it is critical to have the determination and perseverance needed to sell, a culture that amplifies the values of the organization is what creates differentiated organizations.
It is not just the job of a marketing team or an external agency to create the external hype, which we call Marketing, it is much beyond and actually goes deep inside the core of the organization.
The way the company represents itself, communicates, deals with its internal organization, and its employees behave while faced with their peers in other companies is what represents the company and this defines the marketing Culture of the company.
While it becomes difficult for smaller organizations to create a visible culture, which can be resonated by its employees, certain steps can be taken to ensure that the entire company brings the same face of the company to the outside world. Lot of it is to do with communication.
Going tactical, marketing cultures can be created right from standardizing email signatures to the way MoMs are recorded and circulated. Aligning of websites with marketing collaterals create a perception of seamlessness across other aspects. Uniformity in communications to customers slowly but steadily helps in creating a brand that an organization stands for.
Therefore a facet of Marketing is into spending big on creating visibility and perception, it also has a lot to do with the culture an organization chooses to adapt
While Marketing can be equated with ‘Soft Skills’ of a human being , sales is the actual character of the organization. While sales at the very minimum an exchange of product, solution or services in exchange of money, in practicality the sales is the process that leads to this final act when the exchange takes place. The tenacity with which the organization conducts itself, the perseverance, the innovation in positioning, efforts and investment in relation building defines the attitude of the organization.
A luxury brand can be in demand because of its ‘don’t care for buyer attitude’ while a similar attitude for an organization with a product which has multiple competing products can spell doom for the organization. A services company expecting repeat sales from an organization would do great with dedicated account managers, while an organization with low cost product line would sink with investments if it chose to do the same with all its buyers.
The attitude of an organization would therefore determine how it takes its product/solution/service to the market and the position, in terms of quality, price and value that it commands. In simple terms, this attitude determines, how we negotiate, concede, refuse and win business deals. This attitude defines the nature of not only the organization’s sales force but the entire leadership of organization that contributes to the sales process.