Nine: Marketing and Sales Collide
The traditional perspective on sales is that it involves getting the customer over the last hurdle, to the point where they hand over money in exchange for a product. In the present day, there are more transactions than just the final sale.
Examples include subscribing to a newsletter, opting-in to email promotions, creating an account, agreeing to refer others, publicly "liking" a brand, providing personal information to enter a sweepstakes, and so on. These are often considered to be marketing activities because they are not related directly to making a sale - but salesmanship is needed to get customers to participate.
Buying vs. Selling Processes
The authors present a strange "buying process" that seems contrived to support the notion that it is similar to the AIDA+S of traditional marketing. So instead, here is a more realistic problem-solving model that doesn't match quite as neatly:
- Recognize a problem or opportunity
- Identify the desired outcome
- Consider options to achieve it
- Select the best course
- Take action
- Evaluate the results
This does not neatly mesh with their model of the selling process, but the two are not very far: Desire, Action, and Satisfaction mesh with the last three steps. While Attention and Interest are generally associated to the third step, they could be in the first two steps as well (convince them they have a problem, or suggest what the desired end state would be) - and, most importantly, a seller begins with the presumption that their merchandise is already the "best course" and seeks to shortcut thorough evaluation of any other option.
Back to the authors, they suggest that it's "not surprising" that the buying and selling processes are so well-matched because successful selling requires catering to, rather than usurping, the buyer's behavior.
Investigating Needs is Iterative
When trust has been established between a vendor and a customer, the customer may grant the vendor permission to participate in the earlier phases of the process. For example, a hardware clerk might be approached by a customer who wants to buy a nail, but by asking a few questions about what the customer is attempting to accomplish he might help them recognize that they should use a bolt instead.
In that situation, a poor salesman might sell them a nail, knowing that they will fail and eventually return to purchase a bolt. At the same time, a poor customer would turn a deaf ear to expert advice and insist on getting a nail. Because the trust of customers has so often been betrayed, they may be reluctant to listen.
Ultimately, both the seller and buyer benefit from a more interactive process of information-sharing, but it takes time to build that rapport. This is another reasons that companies that are impatient to make a sale often blow a deal they might have otherwise won: the customer must not only have confidence in the product, but in the seller.
Sales is a dialog, which is a reason that face-to-face selling is recognized as the most effective way to sell: the salesman may begin with a patter, but eventually interacts with customers, responding to their specific questions and sensing their level of comfort to know when it is appropriate to ask for the sale.
The problem with marketing, long before the Internet, is that it is not done face-to-face: a message is sent out that is hoped to have mass appeal, is hoped to be reaching the right people, is hoped to be reaching them with the right message. There's no way to know, and there's no way to adapt the message or receive feedback until the customers buy (or don't). Effective marketing is getting in closer touch with the needs and interests of each customer. That is, it has much to learn from sales.
Marketing is Not Sales
Traditionally, marketing has fed sales - it brings the prospects into the showroom, where sales goes to work on closing the deal. In practice, there are a lot of slip-ups in the hand-off, resulting in an adversarial relationship where each blames the other. When they work harmoniously and reinforce rather than interfere with one another, they can be a highly effective team.
In the present day, the distinction between marketing and sales are blurring - and customers never did make the distinction: when they hear conflicting messages from the brand, they lose confidence in the brand, and are not reassured when they are informed that different departments of a firm are not on the same page.
Ultimately, this feeds to one of the primary sources of reluctance: that the product will not be as promised. This undermines their confidence in the provider and the solution, and pushes them further away from buying.