John Jantsch once again hits the mark with his blog on Filling the Gap Between Generation and Conversion. He offers this definition - Marketing is lead generation and sales is lead conversion.

As to which is more important, he responds “neither is more important, nor are they separate. The world's most successful businesses may indeed have a separation along these lines, but they meet and work hand in hand in the middle to effectively do what I've heard marketers call Lead Nurturing.”

He continues with “The gap between generating a high quality, ideal lead and that lead becoming a client requires harmony between sales and marketing and the joint development of an ideal client profile, core marketing message based on customer input, and the education based tools required to nurture a lead along an evolving, logical path to becoming a converted lead or client.

There is no money in us and them, sales and marketing. Get the sales folks, the marketing folks and a handful of ideal clients in a room for a day and figure out what really makes each one tick.”

Taking this a step further, Philip Kotler in his book According to Kotler, writes that the key processes in marketing are:

1.)              Opportunity identification,

2.)              New product development,

3.)              Customer attraction,

4.)              Customer retention and loyalty building, and

5.)              Order fulfillment.

He says the company that handles all of these processes well will normally enjoy success.  When a company fails at any one it will do poorly.

The point in both of these definitions is that marketing is integral to the identification of what it is the customer wants and will buy, not just in promotion. Promotion is ineffective if the product does not meet the customers’ needs. Chicken and egg question. Cart before horse theory. But, give me a client who listens to and works with the marketing team, and I’ll deliver a successful marketing initiative!

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