Most of us do know the difference between the two, but we always tend to miss some of the key differentiating factors that define and make both effective. When I say Sales Vs Marketing, I mean to compare and not compete, Collaborate and not conflict.
Conflict arises only, out of lack of clarity and especially in real estate most of the times, the line between sales and marketing are not just blur they are in fact intermingled.
To begin with a primary definition -Marketing means something that generates leads and sales means something that converts the leads into a client. Both appear to be mutually exclusive but no company can survive in absence of any one of the entity.
Many real estate companies sometime or the other, in their long business timeline have either found themselves saying “We have loads of site visits but they just don’t buy” While other times they might be saying “no body visits the site, but those who have visited so far have inevitably booked” both these statements reflect an exact lack of Sales Skills and Marketing skills respectively.
The Real estate business few years ago was about location, location and location now it is about positioning, positioning and positioning.
To find the perfect positioning we first need to review our concept regarding the roles of marketing and sales
Let’s dive in to top 5 key differentiation between marketing and sales.
- Marketing is all about brand and Sales is all about product. Marketing team that tries to push sales of a project, more or less fails. Marketing should and must always work and talk about the brand and value that the brand brings with it and sales team that tries to promote the brand never achieves the acceptable proportions. Sales team must always keep in mind that the lead that has reached them is because of brand and marketing,so now the role is to sell the project/product and not the image.
- Marketing team works with Advertising agencies, product development team /architect and business consultants, where as sales team works with real estate agents, lead generators, and network of clients.The product design and product positioning is what marketing exists for, Sales teams primary objective is to be available with complete arsenal of product details and high level of convincing ability and skills.
- Marketing team never thinks on the basis of location, cost and neighboring competition it always thinks about the target group, demographics and positioning. Whereas sales team is all about location, cost and competition and they always communicate ‘how they are the best in all the three’ sometimes, even if they are not. Sales people are not liars they are exceptional story tellers. Marketing team is the author of that story.
- Marketing is focused on ideation, concept and campaign design where as sales team work on planning, execution and conversion mechanism. Marketing team essentially is inventor of new way of bringing more buyers to your gate, and sales guys are someone who don’t let them out of the gate till the cheque is received. These two are solid and stark opposite kind of skill sets connected by a single common goal called revenue.
- Marketing thinks on scale, events, coverage and reach while sales team is focused on each individual client, site visits and time spent with client. For marketing team, bigger is better, marketing team needs space to scoot around and spread the sparkle, but for sales team focus is priceless, for sales team it all comes down to watch in the eyes of a potential buyer and speak with enticing conviction that this is where their family will stay for most part of their life and will call it their home. For Sales it is one victory at a time.
Conclusion: Marketing can never be the responsibility of head of marketing, it is inevitably only as good as the founder/owner/CEO — Sales team is absolutely a captain’s game where the head of sales team must be a skipper with charming hugs and scolding with fatherly pat on the shoulder to his team. Owner is a coach of the sales team.
There is one more thing that marketing and sales head differ, marketing head works on the psyche of the buyer, and sales head works with the human in the buyer.
Enough said both are the eyes of the real estate organization one the charismatic other ever charming. Keep both of them happy your business will be happy.
