What is the different between marketing and selling? And which is more important?

The question which we will answer is something like this: "I've been collecting marketing ideas... and I have a drawer full! I also have a stack of promising sales leads I've accumulated. And I know it's important to stay visible, so I do a lot of networking, but then I just end up with more names in the stack. How do I prioritize all this?"

If you've ever wondered something similar, you may have lost sight of a very important truth - the way to win the marketing game is not to catch the most sales leads; it's to make the most sales. Marketing activities that increase your number of sales yearly are good, and activities that don't are bad, even if they bring in plenty of leads. If you don't follow up on the sales leads together, you are throwing away your time and money.

The First purpose of marketing strategies like public speaking, writing articles, getting publicity, networking, promotional events, and advertising is to gain visibility. (A secondary purpose of the first three strategies can be to gain credibility.) Why do you want to be visible? It's not just so people will know who you are and what you do, it's so they will do deals and business with you.

If someone has already expressed interest in doing business, call him. Do it right now. Memorize this rule -- following up on hot, or even warm, client leads is always more important than marketing for more visibility.

There is a simple test you can take to see where you need to focus your marketing versus selling efforts. Think of the marketing and sales process as a water system that begins by filling your pipeline with sales leads. The pipeline empties into your cash box.

Your intent is to move the sales leads further along in the system, to making a presentation of some kind (by phone or in person), and finally closing the sale and deal with customers.

When you have promising leads you aren't contacting, the follow-up stage is clearly your stock place. Take that stock of sales leads and sort them into three categories: prospective clients, useful networking contacts, and other. Now sort the prospective clients into hot, warm, and cold. Stop right there and follow up with all the hot and warm leads but focus on hot ones.

If, and I do mean if, you still need to do more work about marketing after following up with all those sales leads, go to the networking contacts and sort them into two groups: people who can lead you directly to prospective clients, and people who can lead you to other marketing opportunities. Now Stop, and you guessed it, follow up with the people who might have sales leads for you.

You should now have three types of data groups: cold client leads, people who can lead you to marketing opportunities, and other. Now is the time to decide whether you need to do something new to market yourself at all. Look at what you have been doing so far to get all groups those hot and warm leads you had. Maybe you just need to do more of the same.