Sales and Marketing Are Not The Same Thing

by Tom Barnes
May 2000

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April 2000 will go down in history as the month the bubble burst. The Internet became just another business sector. Now, while Jeff Bezos needs to remind analysts daily that he has a billion dollars to get his company to profitability, Wall Street changes its expectations to include a return on investment. Does this surprise anyone?

The gold-rush, get rich quick buzzaholics move on to wireless; while business-to-consumer Internet plays have become about as sexy as kissing grandma. Everything changes again--or does it?

If you work in broadcast media you are intimately familiar with the granular differences between marketing and sales. Marketing creates and defines demand, sales fulfills it, closes it, and turns concepts and products into cold hard cash. The problem for the Internet guys has always been sales. They had hoped they could automate it, process it, and sterilize it. They would use this new tool to distance themselves from the great unwashed. The Internet was cool to the techno-geeks because no one would have to 'sell' anything. Better yet, consumers would not have to deal with pesky salesguys. Marketing would be the dominant challenge, and that would be cool. After all, marketing is softer, cleaner, sexier, and, let's face it, more fun. Ah--the New Economy.

In the Internet world, everyone's a marketer. No one calls himself or herself a salesperson. That's soooo last century. In the Internet space, sales people are called 'business development professionals'. While there certainly is nothing wrong with the idea of business development, the term itself implies softer goals. Developing business is different than closing sales. While the relationship piece may be the same, it the closing part that's missing. Revenue goals are rarely the terrain of the business development department. That's got to change.

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