Kenny Chapman (The Blue Collar Coach) explains the difference and interplay between marketing and sales using a "marriage" analogy and Joe Polish’s before/during/after relationship cycle. Marketing primarily operates in the "before" (lead generation) and "after" (retention/re-engagement) units, while sales operates in the "during" unit (face-to-face or phone process to close). He emphasizes treating sales and marketing as distinct but aligned functions and investing in after-sales marketing to maintain client relationships.
Chapters
Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach, with a message today regarding sales and marketing. Sales versus marketing. What is the difference between sales and marketing? Now, you know, I talk about the sales and marketing marriage, two of the most important relationships that we have in our companies. Now last week I was being interviewed for a podcast for guys in trucks. Podcast, you ought to check it out. And they were talking to me about the difference between these and asked me to give a definition and it made me think about something I wanted bring to you this week. So sales and marketing are obviously completely intertwined and too often they're used just like that. Sales and marketing. Marketing and sales as they're tied together. Now, we want to marry together, but they are their own individuals. To have successful marriage, you have two individuals that come together in congruency, in unity, common goals, common desires, common results that they're after. Right? And therefore, if they keep their personal values and missions the same and go in the same direction, they have unified growth within that marriage. The same is true with our sales and marketing departments. Now, I don't care if you're one truck operator, what's your services, what you're doing, you have those two departments. Even if you're the only one managing both of them, we want to think about them differently and then how do they relate together? Okay, so my buddy Joe Polish talks about the before, during and after units of the relationship cycle is what I call it the relationship cycle of our client. Right? So the before unit really marketing the sales process in the before unit, meaning we're looking to get somebody to raise their hand and say, hey, we want to do business with you. We want to actually take a look at this right before they know you. That's the offer, that's the headline, that's the radio piece, that's a direct mail piece, that's a Facebook ad, that's the outbound call, whatever that is, that gets them to say, hey, this might make sense to me. That's marketing in the before unit. Then we hit the during unit. This is when we're face to face. If you're in telesales, that's when you're on the phone with somebody. But most of the time we get face to face in the home service industry. That's when the during unit kicks in and you execute your defined, trained and coached sales process. Right? That's getting the client to say, yes, I want to do business with you. Then we move to the after unit and marketing kicks in again because now we're done with the sales process. Now, marketing is effectively the sales process in the after unit and continuing the relationship. Too many of us let the client go after the during unit. We had a transaction. This is about relationship based sales and marketing. Make sure you're investing some of that budget in the after unit because that's where we keep clients engaged. We keep them involved. We get them to where the next time they might have a want, need or desire that we can handle. Then they raise their hand and do business with us and we start the cycle all over again. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach. Until we talk again. Have a better than fantastic week and I'll see you soon.
