Business Development For Dummies

Chapter 9

Driving Sales Success with Effective Marketing

In This Chapter

Understanding the marketing engine

Dividing responsibilities

Drumming up awareness and interest

Getting results for your business requires an alignment with your customers around the customer experience, as in Figure 2-1. Problem is, in the early stages, you don’t know them well – so how can you know what they’re thinking; what do you put in front of them; and what do you say to them? Fortunately, two well-developed disciplines can help you answer these questions: marketing and sales. Like two sides of a coin, they’re inextricably joined.

In small businesses, one person often executes marketing and sales – initially the owner, maybe later on a head of sales. Such firms may not even use the word marketing, but that’s what they’re doing a lot of the time. In fact, often businesses hire a salesperson long before considering hiring a marketing person. Unfortunately, this sequence has the potential to set up marketing as the unwanted child, always playing second fiddle to sales.

With business growth, the sales and marketing departments tend to get separated in an organization and sometimes don’t communicate as ...