Marketing and Sales are complementary functions within a business whose purpose is to drive revenue for the organization. Marketing focuses its efforts on attracting potential clients to the products and services the business offers, thus creating "sales leads." Sales focuses on taking the leads generated by Marketing and converting those leads into customers or clients. Regardless of the size of the business, both functions remain critical to a business' success.

While those who enter Marketing as a profession tend to be seen as creative people, the Marketing function is a business science. Marketing must understand its business' products and services in order to position them appropriately. Marketing must perform extensive research in order to understand the market in which the business competes, as well as identify the type of people to whom the products and services will appeal. From that research, Marketing develops a strategy--called a Marketing Plan--that attempts to gain access to a particular audience it has identified through its research as being inclined to see the value of the business' products and services. Marketing then creates an advertising campaign designed to present the benefits of the business' products and services in a way that mirrors the target audience's needs. Marketing uses analytics in order to measure the efficacy of its campaigns; delivers leads to Sales; measures the rate at which Sales converts the leads to sales to determine the efficacy of its campaign; then adjusts its approach as needed.

Sales is responsible for converting the leads that Marketing provided into customers or clients. There are many different types of Sales Representatives, which serve the varied needs of their organizations. Sales Representatives' primary responsibilities always center on converting leads from Marketing into income for the business. Income may be measured in the form of revenue, which is money coming into the business, or bookings, which is money promised to come into the business in the form of contracts. Sales Representatives generally are compensated with a reasonable salary as well as a compensation plan that rewards them financially for the income they generate for the business. Salespeople that are successful are more effective and efficient--and thus will make more commissions--than their colleagues. If a Sales organization is lucky, it has a good complementary Marketing department that not only focuses on attracting people to its products and services, but also attempts to eliminate those people that probably would not make a purchase from the list of leads it provides Sales.

A practical representation of the dynamic between Marketing and Sales can be seen on this page. Notice the 728 pixel by 90 pixel box at the top of the page. This box is a banner advertisement, called a banner ad. The Marketing department of the company featured in the banner has a product or service it needs to sell. The Marketing department realized that the type of person that reads articles on Salary.com would be more inclined to need its services than the general public. If you are interested in the product or service presented in the ad, you may choose to "click" it. By clicking the banner ad, you would go to their site and be presented with more content about their products and services. If you read their ad copy and decide that you are interested in purchasing it, but have a couple of questions for them you would like to have answered, you most likely can call them and speak to a sales person. At that point, you would be a "lead" for Sales that Marketing generated. Your decision to purchase the product or service would depend on the ability of Sales to answer your questions satisfactorily; however, you would be more inclined to make a purchasing decision than a random person since you fit the profile developed by Marketing.

Marketing and Sales maintain a symbiotic relationship within an organization. Sales depends on the leads that Marketing generates in order to attract new customers. Marketing relies on the efficacy with which Sales converts the leads to customers in order to validate its efforts. For practical purposes, one business function cannot succeed without the other.

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