3 Differences Between a Sales and Marketing Job Description

The Difference Between a Job in Sales and Marketing

While many think that sales and marketing careers are the same, they often prove to be quite different and, subsequently carry very different tasks / required knowledge of the employee.

As of late, many small businesses have added to the confusion as to the difference between sales and marketing jobs by titling and / or marketing their open jobs as "Sales and Marketing" when it is only one of the two.

How to Differentiate the 2:?

When you look closer at daily tasks of a true marketing employee and the duties of a sales professional, you find a vast difference between the two:

3 Facets of Most Sales Jobs:

The main facets of most sales jobs are as follows:

1. Prospecting for new business - sales employees, unless the job is a pure business development position, are required to prospect for new accounts via committing to such actions as cold-calling or prospecting through avenues such as formulating mass emails.

2. Contract negotiation - sales employees are typically responsible for negotiating the prices of the product or service that they are selling. While the marketing team will give the sales professional a format as to how to "pitch" the product or service, the sales representative is the one of the frontline selling to clients including negotiating contracts.

3. Account Management - much of a sales professional's day is dealing directly with clients which includes managing current accounts that the individual is responsible for.

This also includes activities such as up-selling current accounts or contacting those clients who are up for contract renewal. Conversely, the marketing employees will be the ones formulating the sales material that the sales representative sends out to both existing and prospective clients.

3. Main Facets of a Marketing Job:

A few of the main facets of most marketing jobs are as follows:

1. Copywriting - many marketing jobs have their employees consistently writing copy for the website, press releases or other. This also includes blogging.

If you want to consider a career in marketing, be prepared to hone your writing skills as the web now dominates consumer behavior and, subsequently the needed activities from a marketing employee.

2. Analytics - marketing is just as much about creativity as it statistics and numbers.

Marketing employees will consistently have to keep up with or will be responsible for numerical measurements that dictate buyer behavior. For instance, how web visitors and social media gurus respond to a particular advertising campaign are best told through numbers.

Some of the best marketing professionals are more analytical and number oriented than they are creative.

3. Programming - if you want to be the most competitive marketing candidate as possible, I would highly recommend that you learn to program certain languages such as HTML, PHP, JAVA as well as become familiarized with different content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress.

While you won't see programming on every job description, if you know it and you're applying to a small or mid-size company, consider it part of your new job and consider it an added bonus to a prospective employer upon negotiating your salary.