Sales Mama Podcast with Sausha Davis

Sales vs Marketing: Why You Need Both

• Sausha Davis • Season 3 • Episode 3

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Sales and marketing are not the same thing, and confusing the two is one of the fastest ways to stall your revenue.

In this episode, I break down the real difference between sales vs marketing, why you need both to scale, and where each one actually lives inside your funnel.

We cover:

  • What counts as marketing and what counts as sales
  • Where sales actually happen in funnels, DMs, and ads
  • Why content alone doesn’t convert
  • How a sale can happen without a sales call
  • The exact moment marketing must turn into sales

If you’re creating content, running funnels, or having conversations but not seeing consistent conversions, this episode will give you clarity fast.

Plus, a reminder about my Apple Podcast review giveaway and my live training happening this Thursday.

Listen in and start building a business that attracts and converts.

salesmama.biz/scalee25k

salesmama.biz/groundwork 

Thanks for listening to the Sales Mama Podcast. If this resonated with you, screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram @salesmamaschool or @sausha.davis so I can celebrate you taking action.

Leave a written review and you'll be entered to win our monthly listener prize. We choose a winner every month who gets an Amazon Gift Card!

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SPEAKER_00:

All right, welcome back to the Sales Mama Podcast. I am your host, Sasha Davis. And before we dive in today, I have a reminder for you. If you have been enjoying the Sales Mama Podcast, I want you to head over to Apple Podcast and leave a review, screenshot it, and share it on social media. Tag me at Sales Mama School or Sasha Davis. This month I am running a giveaway. And so as a thank you for showing support and showing love, what I am doing is going to pick three winners. The top winner is going to be a$100 gift card. The next is going to be a$50 gift card and a$25 gift card. All right. So again, leave a written review in the Apple Apple review section. Okay. Secondly, before we get started, I am hosting a live training this Thursday, January 15th at 11 a.m. Pacific time. You can head over to salesmama.biz slash scale25K. This is where I'm going to break down how to scale without doing everything yourself. So we're going to talk systems, automation, clarity on sales processes, what marketing is, what marketing isn't, what sales is, what sales isn't, which is actually going to be the episode for today. We're going to break down the differences between that. So let's make sure you are registered. I will also put the link in the show notes. And for those of you who are listening in on Instagram, the link is in my bio. All right, let's get into it. So I did a podcast interview today with a gal that I met on Instagram. And one of the things that we had talked about is the difference between sales and marketing. And so I thought I would just do a podcast on the difference between sales and marketing, in my opinion, and what I teach in sales mama school. And this might be something that could be helpful and beneficial for you. So the cleanest way for you to understand this is I think of marketing as a one-to-many approach. And I think of sales as a one-to-one approach. So marketing is visibility and it creates interest. Sales creates decision. It creates a transaction. It creates a conversion. Okay. So if we think about what questions we will be asking, we think marketing will ask, you know, who is this for? Do I trust them? Do they understand my problem? Things like that. And sales will answer, is this right for me? Am I doing this right now? And how do I move forward? So the acronym that I like to use for sales is BANT, budget, authority, need time. That's been around for ages, but that still applies to sales. So if there's not a decision that is going to be made, it's not sales. It would be marketing. And if you're speaking to an audience, not a one-to-one, that is marketing. So again, one-to-many is more of a marketing approach, where one-to-one is more of a sales conversation. Okay. So what marketing actually is, if we're thinking about it in the capacity of a one-to-many approach, we're thinking things like social media posts, we're thinking things like reels, stories, carousels, things like this, like podcasts. And right now I'm recording a live one. Okay. Um, we think of things like emails, newsletters, ads, free trainings, uh, networking events, um, conferences, summits, anything that's going to get you in front of a crowd is going to be a marketing tactic. All right. Um, and social media can be anything. It doesn't just have to be Instagram. It can be Facebook, it can be LinkedIn, it can be um YouTube, it can be alignable, it can be TikTok. I mean, there are so many different social media platforms now. You can be visible on so many of them and repurpose content so easily now. Like a lot of times, what I will do is sit down and batch content in the beginning of the week and plan out my next seven, 14, 21, 30 days, whatever you know I have capacity for. And I will take a lot of times the same theme and just rephrase it, reword it for the different platforms. Okay. And so when we're thinking about marketing, marketing doesn't technically require a response from one specific person. It's more messaging to show interest, getting people to get eyes on your product or service. So think about it in terms of visibility, okay? It doesn't really matter if somebody replies or not. Obviously, we want to create engagement and get people to reply, but it doesn't really matter if somebody replies or not, okay. And the goal of marketing isn't necessarily to convince anyone, it is really to warm them up. It's to take somebody from cold to warm and then to hot. Okay. So the marketing really sets the stage. It doesn't necessarily close the deal. So if we're gonna think of marketing in terms of good marketing and how to prepare our ICP, our ideal client profile, or our ideal client, or you know, nowadays people are, you know, niche, whatever you want to call it, okay? We need to have a brand presence. That's the thing that I think is going to really skyrocket here in the next few years, is you need to think beyond just a company, and faceless marketing is not going to work anymore. I think you really need to have that brand visibility and have a really strong message behind your brand and have a face of your brand. So we need to build familiarity, we need to build authority, you need to know what you're talking about, you need to have some type of lived experience. I think people are beyond this, oh, I read a book and now I'm an expert, or I took a course and now I'm an expert. I think we need to have some actual life experience behind some of this and know what we're talking about, not just, yeah, not just winging it anymore. I don't think winging it's gonna work. Um, and we need to build up that desire. I I people don't just have frivolous amounts of money anymore like we did, you know, five years ago when COVID came around and people were just buying stuff online, like no big deal. We really need to build up that desire so that want then becomes a need. And once it becomes a need, then the sale happens. But people don't always move when it's a want, okay? They move from when it's a want to a need, and so that's where we need to build up that desire to the point where we shift that want into a need. And we were need we need to remove all resistance to the yes, and so we're doing that in the marketing process. We need to remove any confusion, we need to remove any resistance, we need to remove any objections that somebody may have to purchasing our product or service, and that's something that we can do in our marketing funnel, in our marketing stages, in our messaging, in our social media, in our newsletters, all of the things prior to getting in that one-to-one sales conversation. Okay. So think about all of those things that can be in your marketing. Again, one to many. Now, when we're thinking about sales, what sales actually is, sales is that one-to-one decision making. And if you think about sales, it's always a one-to-one transaction. Okay. It can happen in a DM conversation, it can happen on a sales call. Um, and a sales call can happen on a video call or an actual phone call. Like people still do phone calls. It can happen in voice notes, it can happen in text messages, follow-up messages. Um, but really it's just asking for that commitment, whether it be on a landing page, a sales page, in a DM automation, on a phone, like it is asking for the sale, and that transaction is the process of a sale. Okay, the sale is we're going to require some type of interaction. Everything prior to that is going to be marketing. And so that requires some level of leadership, and that requires some level of asking for that sale. We can't just hope and pray that people are going to take the next step. We need to prepare them for the next step and we need to be very clear about that next step. And so, what I see happen is people will have a very vague landing page or people will have a very vague sales page. And it's not clear, it's not blatantly obvious what the next step needs to be for that person. And so if somebody's confused, what do they default to? They default to the negative. So they're never going to make a decision, which in and of itself is a decision, uh, but they're never going to say yes if somebody is confused or not sure what the next step is. If they're not confident in that yes, they're not going to move forward. Okay. So a sale will happen when we have a clear offer, and that clear offer is made clear to that person, and a clear decision is requested from that person. Okay. So we have a clear offer and we have a clear decision, and then the exchange of money, that energetic exchange of money. Okay. So that transaction, that money movement, that is what happens in a sale. All right. If there is no money movement, a sale does not happen. I don't care how many times somebody tells you I'm in, or yeah, let me grab my credit card or I'll be back, or every other thing under the sun, unless that person actually registers, unless that person actually gives you money, it is not a sale. It is not a sale. It does not count as a sale, okay? On any sales leaderboard, on any sales management, on any sales team, unless the sale has gone through the system, it is not a sale, okay? So that transaction, that money, that financial exchange is what is shown, is is considered a sale, okay? And so people get confused between sales and marketing and how it shows up in a funnel because we talk about funnels, we talk about systems, we talk about automations. And so I think people understand that marketing is on social media and sales can happen in the DMs and on phone calls and on Zoom calls and whatnot, but people don't understand where the switch is in a funnel. And so let's let's talk a little bit about how it shows up in a funnel, okay? A funnel is in and of itself something different, all right? A funnel isn't necessarily sales or marketing, a funnel is a funnel and it includes sales and marketing, okay? So both things exist inside the funnel, okay? So for example, if somebody sees something on social media or sees a reel, sees a post, sees an ad, that is marketing step of the funnel. That would be your top of funnel, okay? And then they're gonna click that link, and that is also going to be marketing. That's going to be the next step of the funnel. Then they're gonna read a page, you know, it could be a landing page, it could be a sales page, something like that. That is still a marketing step of that funnel, okay? And for example, like I'm hosting a live training this week, they could opt into a live training. We're gonna collect their name and their email address and their phone number. That is still a part of a funnel. Just because we collected their name and their email address does not mean that it's a sale. That does not count as a sale. There was no financial exchange. That is clearly an opt-in, and an opt-in is a form of marketing, okay? And so at that point, now they join a trading that's still part of marketing. At some point, the funnel switches, okay. So the funnel then switches from marketing to sales, okay? So it goes from want to need. And so for myself, after that live training has happened, we shift from marketing to then selling. Okay, so that's where the shift happens in my funnel, and it can happen for you as well. So think about if somebody opts in for something that you have for free, it may be free for a certain amount of time and then you switch to selling. Okay, so where at do you switch? Because the moment that you start to ask, okay, now do you want the next step? Do you want to buy this? Do you want to book a call? Are you ready to move forward? Are you ready to take action? Now we're in the sales process because now we are asking them to take the next step, that paid step, which will then lead to a sale. Okay. And if that moment doesn't happen, your funnel is broken. You don't have a funnel that works properly. You have a leak in your funnel. Okay. So how one of my funnels works again, we have at top of funnel ads and social media posts, okay, um, and newsletters and things like that. That's all my top of funnel, where we are talking about live training stuff. Do you have this problem? Do you have this struggle? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next step would be then they go to the landing page and they opt in. Okay, great. They opt in, we collect that. That's still marketing. And then they um get a welcome email. That's still marketing. They will continue to get nurtured up until the live training, that's all marketing. And then after the live training happens, they will get pitched and then from there on, now that is sales. Okay. So that is kind of the difference. All right. But another question that people have is what about somebody who is buying directly from an ad? So let's say that you are somebody who is running ads and it is direct to consumer. Okay, maybe you're B2B, maybe you're B2C, and you're selling straight from an ad. Okay. People think sales just disappear here and that marketing does the entire thing. Okay. But if somebody clicks a social media ad and buys without talking to you, the ad was still marketing. The page that it's on is still marketing, but the decision where they put in their credit card, that process right there is still sales. Okay. So sales doesn't always require a conversation, but it does require a decision. Okay. And so in your marketing, if you're not going to have interaction, you need to make sure that you're having the type of language that would require somebody to move and make a decision. Okay. Need to make them feel something. This is why it's also important that you know your buyer personalities, which is something that I talk about. You need to know if they're strategic, you need to know if they're direct. You need to know if they're emotional. You need to know if they're energetic, so that you can tap into their buyer personality and know what trigger words to use in order to move them forward. Okay. And so the difference is that the sale conversation happened internally. It happened within their mind, within their heart, not necessarily with you or somebody on the team. As they're going through this page, they're asking themselves questions like, does this solve my problem? Does this help me hit my goals? Is this going to get me to the next step? Is this the right thing for me? Do I trust that this is actually going to get me to the next level? Right. And so they're having that internal sales conversation with themselves. And if they can answer yes to all of those things, boom, they buy the thing. Okay. And so that is still the process of sales where everything ahead of that is going to be marketing. Okay. So things like your copy, the structure, the offer, that type of stuff did the job of a salesperson. So that's why it's important if you don't have a salesperson that you have a lot of information on solving all of those problems. So the who, the what, the where, the why, the how, you need to be able to answer those questions if you don't have somebody available to answer those questions. You're going to need that detailed information. Okay. So what about DM funnels? Everybody's using many chat right now. So where does the marketing, you know, where is marketing and where is sales in a DM funnel? Because a DM funnel also uses both. Okay. So again, you're posting content, and now you can post content on just about anywhere. Um, with well, not just about anywhere. I think it's Facebook, Instagram, um, many chat or uh TikTok and a couple other places. But basically, you're posting content that is going to be marketing. That's always going to be marketing. Jesus Christ, stop messaging me. Um, and so that's going to be marketing. And then somebody replies, okay. They drop a comment. Oh my gosh, stop texting me. Ah, okay. Somebody drops a comment and then you reply in the DMs. Okay, that's still marketing. And so you can automate that entire process with a bot, right? You can map out that whole workflow and never be a part of it. And that whole thing, once you're in the DMs, that's actually the sales conversation. You're just having a conversation with an automation. That's it. As soon as that person is in your DMs, that is where the sale starts. And so you can have a setter take over this, you can do this, or you can have an automation do this. But either way, as soon as you start asking questions, as soon as you present that offer, as soon as you ask for the sale, all of those things are going to be part of the sales process. So everything leading up to them commenting on your reel or um posting in your store or commenting on your stories, anything like that is going to be marketing. So when you're solving the marketing stuff, remember it's building that credibility, building that authority. Are you solving their problem? Do you know what they're talking about? All of those things. That is the stuff that you want to make sure that you are talking about in your messaging so that when the time comes to the get to the sale, you are clear that you can solve their problem. And you can start to ask questions to see if that person is then qualified to work with you. Okay. So that's really how you can start to qualify for it. Um, and you can start helping guide them towards a decision. Okay. Again, marketing is one to many, whereas a sale is one-to-one. So asking them things like, what have you tried in the past? What worked? What didn't work? What did you like about what worked? What didn't you like about it? Um, what are you looking for? Um, you know, specifically, um, what are your goals? And so you start to ask those questions in the DMs too. It doesn't always have to be on a phone call. You can absolutely sell, you know, sell by chat is what the cool kids call it these days. It's, I mean, it's been around forever. It's just people come up with names for this stuff now to make it seem, you know, fancy, just like setters and closers, which are just sales professionals. Like sales have been around for years, but now they have fancy words for it, like setter and closer. Um, but, anyways, you're guiding people towards that decision, okay? And then you are helping them take responsibility for their decision. And whether that decision is a yes or a no, that is the objective of that conversation. You need to let go of their outcome because it's not your responsibility for their results, it's their responsibility for their results. But you, as a sales professional or as a business owner, you need to help them gain clarity on whether or not this thing will help them or change their life. Okay. And if it's a yes, hell yes, let's find a way to sign them up. But if it's a no, let it be a no, because not everybody is meant to work with you. And that's okay. Okay, that's where we bless and release, and we move on to the next one. Okay. And that person will have more respect for you by you blessing and releasing them than by you trying to force them into a box that they don't fit in. Okay. This is where we start to shift the way that we do sales. We don't do it the gross, slimy way that people used to do it before, where it's like, at all costs, we're gonna get a yes. No, we're not doing it that way anymore. Sales is a service. Sales is you solving somebody's problem. And that is basically what it is. So get out of your mind that sales is gross because it is not gross. It is simply you solving problems. Okay. And so you need both sales and marketing to scale your business. Yes, you can be successful with one or the other, or you know, an emphasis on one or the other, but you really do need both in order to scale. Because if you only market without any type of sales process or sales system, this is where you will have lots of visibility, but you will have almost no income. I've literally worked with people who have hundreds of thousands of followers and they're making next to nothing per month. I'm talking like 100,000 followers, 200,000 followers, and you know, we think, oh, they have so many followers, they're probably making tons of money. No, because they don't have sales processes and they don't know how to sell. Yes, they know how to market, but they don't know how to turn those people into actual buyers. And so this is why it's important to have sales, okay? So don't assume just because somebody has a lot of followers that they are successful. A lot of times they're hiding behind a broke bank account. Not everybody, but a lot of times they are. And then on the other side of that, yes, you can sell with very few followers. I have seen very successful people with 500 followers, a thousand followers, 2,000 followers, and they're making 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, 100,000 a month. Shit, you not. But the thing there is they don't have the leverage. They have the income, but they don't necessarily have the impact that they want to make. They are not able to get on the shows that they want. They're not able to write the book, they're not able to book the podcast, they're not able to do a lot of the things that they want to do because they're not visible and nobody knows who they are or what they do. And so, in order for you to scale past that, you need to make yourself visible so that people know who you are and so that you have the leverage and the more authority and more visibility. Okay. So marketing is going to bring that volume, bring that visibility, and sales is going to bring that conversion, bring that consistent revenue. And that's why you need both. So if you think about it in terms of a stadium, marketing is going to fill the stadium. It's going to bring all the people, and sales is going to direct them to their seat. This is where you go. This is what you do. Okay. And we don't really want to disappear from one or the other. Like a lot of people will get scared from sales and they'll do it for a little bit until they hit a certain level, and then all of a sudden they're like, I'm good, and they'll take a step back. Or people will show up online for a month and all of a sudden they'll disappear for six months. Sustainability is key. Okay. So it's not this balls to the wall, all or nothing. It's what can you sustainably do on a daily or weekly basis that's not going to burn you out. And if that's, you know, two to three outreach per day, if that's one post per day, like I don't give a shit. Whatever works for you. If posting three times per day works for you, great, do it. But if that doesn't work for you, don't do it. The thing is is sustainability because this all or nothing mindset is the thing that's getting you into these highs and lows, highs and lows, highs and lows. And that's going to wreak havoc not only on your business, but on your nervous system too. And when your nervous system is out of whack, everything is out of whack. Your business is out of whack, your family can feel it, your friends, your community, your horses, your animals, everything. Okay. So this is how you scale without burning out is you create systems and processes to make sure that you are showing up consistently and make sure that things are running smoothly on the back end. So I want to give you some simple ways that you can strengthen kind of each side of those before we close off for today. And so ways that you can improve your marketing is start to think about speaking to one person, even when you're at a public event or when you're creating content. I think sometimes we get too much in our head about I gotta create content for everybody. What I did for a very long time is I had an image of a person and I set it next to my desk and I said, I'm just helping this one person. I'm only making content for this one person. And so think about again who your ICP ideal client profile is. Who is that person? Give her a name, give him a name. What are you helping them with? What is their problem? What solutions are you providing for them? What are they going through right now? What stories can you tell to them? Just that one person, not your entire audience, that one person, because stories sell. Facts, data, all that stuff is great. That will help you in your sales process when you get those people on a phone call and you're talking to an emerald. But right now, that's not gonna matter. Like people can Google that stuff, people can chat GBT that stuff. Stories sell. So think about what stories are impactful that are going to change that person's life that they're going to say, Wow, I really resonate with this person. Okay, so speak to that one person and be super clear about the solve problem that you solve and talk about it a lot. I have audited so many pages where I'm like, you talk a lot about stuff, but not once did you say what problem you solve. And so blatantly call it out at least once a week in your feed and on your on your stories and in your newsletter. Hi, my name is this, and this is the problem that I solve. I bet you I could go to 10 different pages right now, and almost all of them would fail because nobody puts in there specifically what problem they solve. They talk about who they are and what they do, but not what problem they solve. And it's about them. Remember, it's not about you, it's about them, okay? And we want to repeat this messaging all the time. You will get bored with it way faster than somebody else will get bored with it because you will have new people finding you all the time. And we have to find, we have to find our own way to be creative within the mundane, because that is what is really going to scale is rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, just like eating healthy, just like showing up and working out, just like brushing your teeth. You just get in the habit of talking about the problem that you solve every freaking day. Okay. That is what you do, all right? And then show the proof behind it. Don't just talk about, oh yeah, this is hypothetical. Show the proof. Show what it did for you, show what it did for others. And if you don't have proof, this is where you need to start teaching people for free or low cost until you have the proof. You need to start putting your money where your mouth is, not just say, hey, I read a book and now I'm gonna teach on it. Okay. So those are all ways that you can simply improve your marketing right here, right now. What and then a few things that you can do to improve your sales, aside from getting a script and learning it inside and out. Do not read it on your calls, read it ahead of time. You need to learn these things ahead of time so that you know what questions to ask, when to ask them, what objections to overcome, and how to overcome them. And doing this in the mirror every single day, just like you would practice before a big speech, just like you would practice before a big game, just like you would run before a big marathon. You need to do the same thing with your sales so you're not fumbling over your words when you show up for the call. Okay. But what we need to do is ask better questions. So many people have just vague questions like, what are your goals? I'll ask questions like, how many sales do you want to uh uh generate in the next 90 days? What does your funnel look like? How many people do you want to opt into your newsletter? How many followers do you want? What do you want your systems to look like? Do you want more people on your team? You know, so be more specific and you will get more specific answers. If you ask vague questions, you'll get vague answers. And that's not gonna help anybody solve any problems. The next thing that I want to talk about is stop over-explaining. So many times on a sales call, people will just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ask a question and shut up. You should be talking about 20% of the sales call. The entire rest of the call should be your prospect, should be your potential client. And if that ratio is off, you've lost the game. Okay. So pretend your sales call is a game. If you are talking more than 20 or 30%, you lose. Er, loser. Okay. So make sure that you stop over-explaining and that you are so confident in yourself that you can be short, concise, clear, and direct in those sales calls. Next, you need to lead the conversation. A lot of times people will let the prospect or the client run away with the conversation, and they have a hard time getting that conversation back. So you need to learn how to maintain frame throughout that half hour, 45 minutes or an hour. Okay. Learn to be the leader, the authority. Remember, you are the doctor, quote unquote. Somebody came to you for a diagnosis, right? A diagnosis, and you are assigning them a prescription. Okay. You are the authority. They came to you for a reason. So you need to show up as the leader, as the authority, not this like willy-nilly, you know, jokester type of thing. Okay. And then at the end, ask for a clear decision. And the worst thing that you can do on a call is leave it at a maybe. So get a clear yes or a clear no and get clear next steps out of that call. Okay. You know, and if they say, I need to think about it, great. Specifically tell me what you need to think about so that I'm clear, so that I know what to provide for you for our next call. And if it's a no, again, let it be a no. Bless and release. They'll have more respect for you that way. Okay. And just because it's a no today doesn't mean it's not a no in three months or six months or a year from now. Okay. And remember, selling isn't gross, selling is a service. This whole process is you just discovering if you can solve their problem or not. Okay. So to wrap us up, thank you for being here for this live podcast recording episode. If you felt like this helped you at all, if it helped you clarify the difference between sales and marketing or how you could enhance your sales and marketing and what the difference is, I would love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts specifically. That's where we're doing the giveaway. Remember, um, at the end of the month, I will pick three winners. They will get a$100 gift card, a$50 gift card, and a$25 gift card. Um, and then don't forget we have the live training this Thursday at 11 a.m. Pacific time. I'm gonna be walking you through some of these strategies, um, you know, the difference between sales and marketing, how to convert, um, you know, how to scale to those um five-figure months, how to fix the bottleneck in your business, how to stop being so hyper independent. Um, and that link is salesmama.biz slash scale to five K. Uh, the link is also in will be in the show notes, and it's also in the link in my bio. So thanks for being here, and we'll catch you next time.