Transcripts

Commentary: Marketing Vs. Sales

JEFF YASTINE: In tonight`s commentary, it`s a subtle but important difference: making the distinction between selling and marketing. Here`s Tom Stewart, editor of the "Harvard Business Review."

TOM STEWART, EDITOR, HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: Every CEO I know spends a lot of time with sales people or in the field talking to customers. No strategy can succeed unless a company gets control of its top line. If you`re not paying attention to sales, you`re not paying attention to business.

Yet in many ways the sales function gets no respect. It`s largely ignored in business schools. Google the phrase "professor of sales" and you get 169 hits; Google "professor of marketing" and you get 808,000. In some companies, sales and marketing are practically at war, according to Phillip Kotler, who wrote the most famous marketing textbook, and Neil Rackham, probably America`s best-known sales expert.

We see the big picture, marketers say. We understand brands. We`ve got data and big budgets. Not so fast, sales people reply. We`re the indispensable ones. You`ve got data, we`ve got customers. You spend money, we make it. It`s tempting to look at this conflict and say, oh, grow up. But organizational life is never that easy. Sales and marketing seek the same objective by different means. They measure success differently. They compete for resources. The field always mistrusts the home office. According to Kotler and Rackham, you can`t just declare a cease-fire. You have to begin a process of joint projects, shared incentives, and job rotation, among other things. The war between sales and marketing turns out to be like all organizational conflicts: it`s a fight that both sides know is unnecessary, but neither knows how to avoid. I`m Tom Stewart.