Selling is a Job, Marketing is a Mindset

Those who produce and those who sell.

The professionals most reluctant to be seen as salespersons or marketers often concern themselves exclusively with “producing quality”. They imply that selling and marketing is not for them. What they seem to ignore is that to use the very concept of “quality” in their daily activities, they are indeed doing a lot of marketing!

According to ISO 8402-1986 standard, quality is “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs”. While marketing is often defined as “learning about your client needs and delivering on them”. So when professionals say that they know what clients want and how to respond to their quality expectations, they’ve already done more marketing than most.

As a matter of fact, when finance directors adapt the processes in their department to add flexibility for the clients in the ordering or payment processes, they are contributing to the marketing effort. When R&D takes steps to deliver a documentation that is actually readable and adds communication to information, it is contributing to the marketing effort. Etc. When they don’t – or do it the wrong way – they are weakening the company and limiting its ability to create value.

When the R&D department of Pepsi created Crystal Cola to follow the New-Age trend of the time, they got it awfully wrong, ignoring what clients really wanted and they lost a lot. When the production line of a small sandwich delivery shop transformed its processes to accept orders from all possible channels up to 1h before delivery in the Brussels metro area, they got it right and thrived.

It’s not a matter of being large or small. It’s a matter of introducing marketing good practices in all areas of the business. It’ about helping everyone to produce AND market value. Because everyone should.

Selling is a job, marketing is a mindset.

Selling is about interacting skilfully in real-time with clients, partners and influencers while overseeing the supporting internal activities required by an often rigorous process, to get from the hope of a deal to the signature of a contract. You need to like it, learn the ropes and be good at it. So we can agree that being a salesperson is not for everyone. Just like being a teacher, an accountant or an interpreter, it’s a job.

Marketing, on the other hand, is fundamentally about caring and nothing else. Caring enough to learn about clients; caring enough to show we care. And the realisation that this needs to happen at the individual level will drive radical changes in the organisation.

The change first needs to happen in the dedicated “Marketing Department”. Rather than maintaining that marketing is theirs alone to do, they should transform themselves into a driving force to introduce marketing in the very culture of the company, as a constant concern of every employee.

They will start with disseminating client understanding throughout the organisation. This responsibility of theirs, often forgotten or dismissed, is a fundamental element of marketing: everyone in the organisation should know about clients – their needs, their constraints, how they will use the products or services delivered, why, etc.

And it should be clear that this information is given to be acted upon. So the next step is to provide each individual in the organisation with the means to contribute. This is where the Total Quality Management program comes into play (if you don’t have one, well, you should). This continuous quality improvement framework will be far more efficient based on a deep (and widespread) knowledge about clients.

But marketing is also about communicating with clients. And although some of it will be taken care of by the Marketing Department or the Sales Team, there is actually a lot of communication going on between clients and people who are not in these groups. So this is a second, often forgotten or dismissed, responsibility of the Marketing Department: make sure everyone understands and applies the basic principles of marketing communication.

It’s not a matter of deciding who can or cannot do marketing. It’s a matter of introducing marketing good practices in all areas of the business. It’s about helping everyone to communicate on behalf of the company. Because everyone is.

Be relevant, expected and personal.

The purpose should not be to transform everyone into seasoned marketing executives mastering all the technical aspects of marketing communication. This level of expertise is only required for members of the Marketing Department and there are plenty of schools, training courses, books or online material to get them trained, but them alone.

At the other end of the communication spectrum, the purpose should not be to train people how to write or speak. The ability to avoid spelling mistakes, to talk respectfully or to form sentences that make sense is a matter relevant to the Human Resource Department. The assumption is therefore that it is being taken care of.

What’s left for the Marketing Department to help people with is the basic marketing veneer to be added to any professional contact. It could seem like a daunting task and would need to be tailored to each organisation. But if I had to go about it, I would start with three simple principles: be relevant, be expected and be personal.

Whatever the subject, always focus on how you company, your product, your service or the task at hand is relevant – for your client! Your communication will be immensely more powerful if you think it through the “what’s in it for my client?” point of view.

Some messages are expected because they are a contractual obligation or an agreed industry practice. No one should miss on these but one can still make a difference by selecting the channel these messages will be most expected through: a document, a letter, a call, a text message, a tweet? And then what about going the extra mile and sending a message that is not common practice but will make your client wonder why your competitors are not doing it yet?

And finally, to paraphrase a famous Dale Carnegie quote, “there is no word that people like to hear more than their name”. Make every interaction a personal one between two individuals who value and respect each other. That will go a long way to establish how you (and your company) care.

It’s not a matter of selecting who is skilled or not. It’s a matter of introducing marketing good practices in all areas of the business. It’s about helping everyone create value through marketing. Because everyone can.