Rob Learns About Sales: Part 1

Guess what you marketing blog faithful, I've got some good news! Recognizing my stupendous abilities as a talented and witty blogger (save for the occasional fart post) the bigwigs at Experience.com approached me with an exciting opportunity over the summer. For this cycle of blogging, I will be writing not only about marketing related news, but also about the sales industry.

Now, I'll be the first to admit I'm not exactly a sales guy. Sure, I'm a smooth talker, and I think I might be good at selling, but I'm not sure I have the stomach for it. Then again, maybe that's just because most of my understanding of sales stems from Glengarry Glen Ross. Cold calling, chasing leads, closing deals. How much of that is actually part of the sales professional's job? How exactly does the sales team of a company work with the marketing team? Better yet, what exactly is the difference between sales and marketing?

In my quest to find the answers to questions like this, I've done what any savvy young professional should do: I asked people. Specifically, I used LinkedIn to pose the question, "In one sentence, what is the difference between marketing and sales?" Pretty clever move, no? In just a few hours I had already gotten loads of great answers which I'm really excited to share. So, here we go...

PSYCH! Hahaha. I got you guys good. You should have seen the looks on your faces. But seriously, I did ask that question on LinkedIn and I have already gotten a bunch of great responses. However, I'm not going to share them now because I want to wait and see what happens overnight. After all, I don't want to sell you guys short, and, if my gut is right, I'll open my e-mail tomorrow morning to a whole bunch more top notch answers.

In the meanwhile, since I was talking about Glengarry Glen Ross earlier, enjoy this video I found on YouTube. For anyone who's seen the film, you'll undoubtedly remember this fantastic early scene featuring Alec Baldwin as a brass balls havin', f-bomb droppin', real estate sellin' bad ass. Unfortunately, since Experience.com is a pretty family friendly website (I'm not even sure if writing ass is okay) the actual scene is probably too intense to share. Thankfully I found a solid alternative. Enjoy.