There’s no disputing it: The Marketing and Sales functions of your company are joined at the hip. One can easily argue that everything Marketing does is for the purpose of facilitating sales – identifying and finding prospective customers, communicating with them, and persuading them to buy your products and services.
In most cases, the marketing process precedes the sales process, “softening the beaches” for your selling efforts. Market research can identify and locate your target audiences. And marketing communications can establish a dialogue with them through various tactics, including advertising, public relations, social and digital media, to name a few.
Those tactics can jump-start your sales process by conveying key selling points of your product or service to various audiences. That type of lead generation can make selling a lot easier.
Marketing can also aid in sales forecasting. By aggregating data from sources such as U.S. Census figures, market research, and your company’s own research efforts, you can generate an intelligent estimate of total potential sales volume.
