Sales, Marketing, and Business Development- what’s the difference?

Sales, Marketing, and Business Development- what’s the difference? This is a question I have been asked a lot lately. How do sales, marketing, and business development differ, if they aren’t the same thing? To be honest, when I first entered my ‘real-life MBA program’ of starting and commercializing companies, I couldn’t tell you the difference either. I believe the confusion lies from many large companies using generic employee titles using 1 of the 3 roles but not really differentiating the roles according to their true function, thus leading to “Marketing Managers” doing cold calls and “Business Development Representatives” handling advertising efforts…

Rather than explaining the differences in tasks and responsibilities, I find it easier to conceptualize by understanding the differences based on where each role fits in the sales cycle (or ‘funnel' for you marketers).

Below, I will explain the core levels where each of the 3 roles must shine, specifically from the perspective of a business to business (B2B) sales model.

Pre-conversion: Marketing.

Your Marketing department's job is to maintain a consistent brand perception amongst your target audience. Education and awareness should be the main priority for every marketer working on a pre or early product launch. Remember, marketing includes the 4 P's (place, product, promotion, and price). Covering the 4 P’s insures there is a healthy dose of qualified leads being introduced to your solution, with enough credibility backing their psychological trust in your legitimacy. Without a strong marketing team, customer traction is minimal, credibility is low, and your business development reps may struggle to close deals and grow revenue.

You can think of your marketing team as being behind the scenes, feeding a robust business development pipeline and growing your brand’s awareness each day!

Conversion Time: Business Development.

Now that your pipeline is stacked with interested customers, in the B2B sales model, it is your business development team’s job to close the deal. As you can see here, without a strong marketing team, your business development team will not have prospect customers to close on, and without your business development team, your marketing team will be out of jobs… ie. no revenue flowing in the door to pay their salaries.

A good business development team has current industry knowledge, deep competitive intelligence, strong key decision maker connections, and understands the intimate challenges and needs of their customers, thus positioning your product as the right solution to ease the customer’s life.

Depending on your business model and end- user, business development may be of more focus for your organization than standard sales reps, or vice versa. Business development tends to be at the strategic level, while sales is very tactical, ‘boots on the ground’ approach.

Again, your business development team is the final deal maker. Marketing selects the priority conferences to attend, designs the exhibit booth and collateral, and builds your brand’s credibility so the business development team can show up, persuade, negotiate, and get customer’s to sign on the dotted line.

Intra and Post- conversion: Sales.

Now, let me remind you that this article is mostly referring to a B2B sales model. In a direct to consumer model, it is possible that there is a small business development team but a very large sales team. It all depends on your end user, barriers to entry, and industry landscape.

As mentioned before, sales tend to be a more tactical, ‘boots on the ground’ approach. Once your business development team has closed the deal, your sales team will step in to act as either a territory manager or account manager. Both are extremely different, in my opinion, but both have a very important job!

Territory Manager: a territory manager is someone who sells deep into an organization. Now that your customer is in the door, someone has to nurture that account to sell more products to more users, and grow the business within that account. I refer to this as cross- selling or the 80/ 20 rule (80% of your business should come from 20% of your accounts).

Account Manager: an account manager’s role is to keep your customer happy so they stick around with you. Along with cross selling and expanding your business in the account, an account manager’s sole responsibility is to make sure everything is taken care of in day to day business so next year, when it’s time to renew that contract, you retain the customer and extend the contract.

Example: In a surgical device sales organization, business development will close the hospital account on accepting or evaluating your device, the territory manager gets as many doctor’s within that hospital to trial the device, and once the surgeon agrees, the account manager supports the surgeon’s operations until they feel comfortable utilizing the device in surgery alone.

As you can see, a sales representative’s job is just as critical to overall success as marketing and business development. Without sales, marketing efforts would have a low ROI due to poor customer retention, and business development would have to duplicate extra efforts every year to keep up with the previous years revenue goal, yielding low annual growth. Sales is critical in maintaining a healthy revenue base so your marketing and business development team can continue to operate comfortably while incrementally attacking larger markets with more lucrative opportunities.

As Director of Corporate Strategy at Aperiomics, I believe that it is vital to have your marketing, business development, and sales team's all working together in tandem, rather than fragmented under different divisions. All 3 belong under the commercial department’s roof in order to maintain brand continuity, consistent customer communication, and unified growth efforts.

Should you have questions, comments, or just want to know how the 3 may work together in your organization’s business model, feel free to contact me at collinstilessmith@gmail.com !

To see more posts on biotech commercialization, marketing, and health care business development, connect with me here ⤵️