Sales people, by and large, have a lowly reputation. When people think of someone in sales, they think of sales clerks in department stores, used car sales, and other examples of low-level positions. This is unfortunate because, in fact, sales and marketing are the lifeblood of business. Without them, our economy would come to a grinding halt. Sales and marketing are a central, crucial part of business, and understanding sales and marketing is one of the most important areas of business studies. We've all heard that if you build it they will come, and that the world will beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. Unfortunately, for the most part that is not true. If no one knows that you built it, no one will come, even if you have indeed built a better mousetrap. The world of business is full of examples where better products failed due to a lack of marketing and business strategy. Conversely, there are a lot of mediocre products that came to succeed and dominate due to good marketing. Successful marketing, essentially, means for a company to have the right product at the right price at the right place, and making sure customers know about it. That sounds simple in theory, but it's not so simple in practice. Apart from a good working knowledge of marketing principles, it often boils down to where and how to apply a company's resources. If a company spends most of its money on product development and little on sales and marketing, it likely will fail. On the other hand, if most is spent on sales and marketing efforts and there aren't any good products to back up the claims, it will fail as well. What's needed is a proper balance. Often, businesses find themselves in a classic "Catch-22" situation where they need marketing to get sales, but they first need sales to pay for marketing. When studying marketing, student and teacher alike can benefit from real life examples of successful marketing. This helps in identifying all the components involved, such as the proper product (one that works and has appeal), a proper price point (low enough for people to buy, but high enough to facilitate a profit), the proper time and place (the product must be where it is wanted by customers), and marketing to the proper target group (concentration on people who are likely to buy). It is also important to realize that good marketing applies not only to physical products such as breakfast cereal, but also many other things people are willing to pay for. Manchester United, for example, is a product that relies on the same principles of sales and marketing as any other product. What it boils down to is that anyone, from students preparing for their GCSEs to people working for, or running, a business must know at least the basics of marketing. In more advanced business studies, this also includes market planning, research, strategies, techniques, models, segmentation, surveys, and pricing. It also requires a level of knowledge of product life cycles, customer service, leadership and communication. There are many business theory resources on the web that explain marketing principles, and many of them are free. Take advantage of them. Without sales and marketing, modern society as we know cannot exist.
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