Marketing and Sales Must Work in Unison

Follow these tips for creating promotional materials that work as hard as you do.

By Kim T. Gordon

Great marketing materials lower the cost of selling and raise the return on your marketing investment. Does your new business have a family of sales and marketing tools you can be proud of? If not, you have to learn to create them, tools that touch prospects throughout the sales cycle and motivate them to buy.

Like your most professional business suit, your tools have to make the right impression–the first time, every time. And they need to be ready and waiting the moment you need them at each sales and marketing touch point. These are all the places and times your prospects come into direct contact with your materials, from when you first present a business card to the moment your direct-mail postcard hits a top prospect’s desk.

Follow these important tips for great materials that work as hard as you do.

Support sales with marketing.

There’s a big difference between sales and marketing. Selling encompasses all the one-on-one interpersonal contact, including meetings, phone calls, individual e-mails and networking. Marketing tactics, on the other hand, touch large groups of prospects, such as via direct mail or radio advertising.

Marketing exists to support sales and can reduce your customer acquisition costs over pure selling alone. Consider this: What would it cost in time and cash if you were to visit 500 prospects, trying to sell each one individually? Now contrast that with the budget required to send a postcard to the same 500 people. The marketing tactic would cost dramatically less, take considerably less time, produce leads and convey a selling message with the potential to move the prospects closer to a buying decision. Sales and marketing work together, and you need a combination of tools and tactics for a well-rounded campaign.

Read the rest of how marketing and sales must work in union here