The Structure of Marketing. Advanced Strategies to help you sell

Before we start discussing the Wonderful World of Marketing
I would like to share an idea with you. Well, this is more
of a principle than an idea. It's the principle of the
structure of Marketing primarily the broad definition of
Marketing and how it applies to small businesses as well as
Fortune 500 enterprises.

The idea for this issue was bouncing around in my mind for
more than 10 years after a conversation I had with a
software company where I was serving as the VP of Business
Development. The conversation was around business planning
and Marketing.

We were developing the business plan and the subject of the
day was Sales and Marketing, especially the hires and
structure of the departments. The CEO that I was talking
with was an ex Big Business (Fortune 500) executive with an
old fashion look on business planning and Marketing. We
got a bit stuck on what was marketing and how we would
structure the departments.

The problem was simple. The CEO wanted to have a Marketing
Department and a Sales department. He wanted them to be
different cost centers, different departments running
independently from one another. I wanted to have one
department working together under one cost center. I
thought the concept was simple and the decision very easy.
I was wrong, very wrong.

What I considered a very easy decision stretched into an
argument. I really did not understand what the problem
was. After all, isn't Sales a part of Marketing? Isn't
Marketing a Universal Term that explains how to "Market"
products and services? How to place products and services
out in the world? Isn't Sales just one part of that whole
process? Well, as it turns out not many people know this
and not many people see it this way.

For some reason, businesses, tradition, bosses, schools,
have separated the sales from the marketing although in
definition sales is just one part of marketing and if the
whole marketing strategy is done correctly the sales is the
easy part.

I can see the dilemma, after all, how do you teach sales at
school to university students? I remember when I was in
school Sales was a bad word. Nobody said "I'm majoring in
Sales" or "I want to be a salesperson when I graduate".
This is without realizing that everything in the real word
is about sales, from your resume to your interviews,
raises, promotions, owning your business, asking for
investment or loans, everything.

Is there a practical business solution? Yes, education.
Understanding marketing and what it is and how to use it is
the name of the game. And creating a solid marketing plan
and department capable of unifying sales and marketing is
the goal. This will make sales a part of marketing and
salespeople will love you for it. After all you will make
their life easy by applying killer marketing techniques to
help them close more sales and be more profitable. To do
this you have to become a marketing expert, everything you
do is marketing, the way you deal with employees,
customers, investors, the bank, suppliers, everything.

What is your homework? Study marketing and everything that
has to do with the subject including sales, public
relations, product development, distribution,
merchandising, packaging, everything. You will be
surprised by the knowledge you gather and the profits you
make.

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Jorge Olson is the creator or Shotgun Marketing, he's an ex
VP of Marketing and veteran CEO and owner of several
companies. He now consults in Marketing and Distribution
Strategies. Find his strategies at
http://www.ShotgunMarketing.com