Hire Sales Or Marketing First? A Common Business Problem

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Should a small business focus on sales or marketing first?

For many small business owners the discussion is to hire sales or marketing first.  Often the owner says “I need sales” So they hired a sales rep.

Is hiring sales first the correct decision?

The roles of sales and marketing are different. Marketing sows the seeds and nurtures them until they are ready; sales does the harvesting. Marketing brings people to the shop, and sales close the sale.

Businesses cannot survive very long with only sales or only marketing. The question to ask is how much marketing effort is needed to support one salesperson.

Which do you hire Sales or Marketing First?

Can sales perform marketing?
Yep, can marketing make sales? Yep.

Marketing may not be effective at the role but will do the job.

What is the right decision?

Hire Sales or Hire Marketing

I need sales tomorrow – so hire a salesperson I need sales in 6 months – so hire a salesperson
I always need sales so hire a sales rep.
So a salesperson gets hired.
Hire Sales or Hire Marketing.
I need sales today – so hire a salesperson
Hire Sales or Hire Marketing.

There is no right or wrong answer. Marketing and sales perform different functions for the business. It’s a team and your team needs both skill sets.

Strategy with tactics is the slowest route to victory

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat Sun Tzu

Sales are tactical,
Marketing is strategy.

Let us Hire Sales First

“the noise before defeat” sales is tactics, marketing is strategic.

How would a sales function without marketing? Let us see. We will dream up a new table salt product.

This salt is all organic, it has all the goodness and none of the bad. The business has clients in an upscale hotel; a small distributor in a close country, and products for sale in a few health food stores.

Sales have a target market, a reference customer, a distributor and a little breathing room. The sales guy get his edict to “get me sales” or hit those targets. The sales rep converts all the leads to sales. Fantastic! How does the sales rep fill the funnel with prospects or do business development?

How do sales fill their funnel with prospects? “Word of mouth” marketing, referrals, cold calling and sales letters? They are neither effective nor fast, but they will work. The time it takes is unknown.

Businesses can succeed without marketing. The growth of the business is limited by this sales-only approach. When this occurs, the lack of investment in marketing is obvious and sales will be limited.

Hire sales or hire marketing?

Let us Hire a Marketer First

The “slowest route to victory” analogy.

The goal of small business marketing is to fill the funnel with leads. The AIDA Marketing model suggests that marketing:

• generate Awareness of the brand
• stimulate Interest
• develop Demand
• cause an Action to occur.

Modern marketing is about “content”. The content addresses each stage of the funnel, for each type of persona. This content must tick the educational, informative, and useful boxes. Content can be blog posts, articles, whitepapers, webinars, videos, presentations, etc.

How does marketing get sales? By generating demand and pulling prospects into the funnel. Sales will occur when the prospect realises their need for the new product.

Marketing should be integrated into the fabric of your business. Not a weekly campaign to get leads for this quarter.  Assess your sales and marketing activity continually. Rinse and Repeat. Learn from your mistakes, build on your successes – and stay open to new methods.

So does a small business hire a sales or marketing first?

Your Turn?

What do you think?
Did you hire sales before marketing? Which route did your business use to discuss this issue?
Did you have an alternative approach?
How many salespeople can one marketing person sustain? What are your sales and marketing stories that inspired or captured your attention?

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