Why a Marketer not a Salesman!!

'Sell me this pen', Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street was handing each of his friends a fountain pen to test their sales skills. All his folks tried to sell the pen explaining its features but Brad, a drug dealer. When he was handed the pen, he asked Jordan, “Write this down for me” to which Jordan replies, “I don’t have a pen” & Brad thus proved he is a salesman.

On the other hand, the marketer is not a manipulator but a communicator who puts forth an offer that meets the buyer's needs right at the place and time of sales opportunity. He is well aware of the fact that no one is actually buying what you sell but they buy the benefits they are going to get from what is sold to them.

5 Big Things that differentiate a Marketer from a Salesman

1) Goal! Goal!!!!: For a marketer the goal is product Positioning, ie to create a distinct impression in the customer's mind; specifically, "the place a product, brand, or group of products occupies in consumers' minds relative to competing offerings".By the way, the Goal of a salesman is..., yes, you guessed it right, its Sales or Revenue.

2) What he thinks: A Marketer thinks about long term strategies that help in branding, communication and sale. While a salesman is least bothered about long term strategies but he comes up with short term strategies a.k.a tactics to make the sale. eg: Brad of 'the wolf of Wall Street'.

3) Knowledge base: For a Salesman, Experience and Social network are most important to achieve his goal of sales execution. Whereas a marketer must know various techniques including advertising, web analytics, database marketing, social engineering, CRM, statistics, reporting etc.

4) Observers: Customers are the primary audience for a Salesman. A Marketer not only have to be anxious about the customers but also the interest of investors and the management of public relations.

5) Standpoint: A marketer's focus is on the brand while a Salesman always puts the customer first.

A good Salesman & a good marketer keep a mutually beneficial relationship all the time, where the marketer adds value to the sales process and the salesman forwards the customer feedback to the marketer.

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By the way, why Marketing is occasionally called as Sales?

The wrong choice of words occurs in our communication mostly because we thought or we are told that the misused word has same meaning of the word which we actually wanted to use :)