Marketing's Job is to Make Products Easy to Sell

One of the most important functions of a marketing department is to support the sales and distribution channels by making products easy to sell.

Salespeople are rational economic actors. Their most valuable resource is time, and their compensation is usually tied to incentive schemes. They will naturally devote their efforts to the products that are easiest to sell, as this maximizes their productivity and income.

How Marketing Makes Products Easy to Sell:

A well-designed marketing program facilitates every step of the sales process:

• Market Preparation: Preparing the market with advertising, public relations, literature, and conference presentations to build awareness and generate qualified leads.
• Sales Training: Providing training that goes beyond product specs to explain how to qualify customers, what persuasive arguments to use, and how to answer common objections.
• Sales Aids: Creating tools that solve real-world problems for the salesperson and the customer, such as effective application notes and competitive analyses.
• Administrative Support: Ensuring that administrative policies (e.g., pricing, quoting, delivery information) are timely, accurate, and facilitate the sale rather than getting in the way.
• Application Support: Having trained application engineers ready to help with the most commonly encountered customer problems.

To do this effectively, the marketing department must have a deep, real-world understanding of what the sales force does, the skills they possess, and the challenges they face. This is why it is critical for marketing and management to spend time in the field.