Marketing, Sales, and Business Development Are Not the Same Job
· 5 min read
Job descriptions often blend marketing, sales, and business development into one paragraph. The three disciplines share a goal but solve different problems, and conflating them is one of the fastest ways to train a team poorly.
Marketing creates awareness and understanding. Its unit of work is an audience: what they know, what they believe, and what they need explained before a decision is possible.
Sales resolves an individual decision. Its unit of work is a person with a specific need, a specific set of constraints, and a specific timeline.
Business development builds the conditions that make both possible: relationships, market access, partnerships, and coverage. Its unit of work is a market.
When a field team understands which discipline a given conversation belongs to, preparation improves. A market-development day is planned differently from a follow-up day, and a first conversation is measured differently from a returning one.