2.2 Stage Sales Orientation
2.2 Stage Sales Orientation
2.2 Stage Sales Orientation
Many people will be wondering when marketing really started, as people have been trading
goods for need and for want almost since the dawn of time. And at what point did the
structures and strategies we know and use today become marketing? Here is a brief look at
how marketing started out, and the main stages of its development over time:
In a lot of ways, Marketing is as old as civilization itself. From Ancient Greece to our
modern days, culture has based its trading and selling upon communication in order to
move products faster than the man next to him. I've always seen it as a concept much like
Darwin's "survival of the fittest" - or what we will call in this case - "the act of persuasion."
Man is undeniably always trying to outshine others, and when it comes to selling, the
concept is not far from it.
Nevertheless, much of the philosophies we know today are rooted in techniques and
developments from the Industrial Revolution. Mass production coupled with advancements
in transportation and technology meant that businessmen needed a better strategy when it
came to the movement of goods. With nations applying laws against monopoly, how
exactly does one sell something when one's competitor is producing the exact same thing?
Ahh, enter the marketer. This is when our profession is officially and truly born.
Corporations became aware of the need of individuals that would study markets and
consumers - its behavior patterns and steps to be ahead of the game. What started out as a
resource that determined what an organization would produce, has transformed into a
science that coordinates why, when and how much of a good will be manufactured and
where it will be sold. Companies went from inward to outward thinking, and our
contribution has never been as clear as it is today.
In the 1920s Salesmen and the sales pitch were both born, as men would actively pursue
sales and talk the consumer into purchasing the item, even if they didnt really need it!
After the Industrial Revolution, competition grew and focus turned to selling. Marketing,
branding and sales became an important pillar as outputs surpassed demand, and companies
competed for customers.
Sales orientation is an example of Companies that focus 100% of their marketing efforts on
selling their products use a sales-oriented marketing strategy. These companies are so
focused on selling their products to their consumers that they pay little attention to other
areas of marketing such as market research or surveying their customers to measure their
level of satisfaction. A company that uses a sales-oriented marketing strategy makes the
following assumptions regarding their customers:
The marketing era, started around the mid-1950s, saw a fundamental shift. Instead of just
trying to persuade consumers to buy the products they were making, companies focused on
making products that customers wanted to buy. Deciding which products to make and
market went from being a case of "filling a hole in the factory" to one of "filling a hole in
the market." It was in this era that the field of market research really took off.
Market orientation focuses on providing products that respond to both the needs and wants
of a target audience.
For example, if a car company engages in market orientation, it will research what
consumers most want and need in a car rather than produce models meant to follow the
trends of other manufacturers.
2.4 Stage holistic marketing orientation
In the modern, "holistic" marketing era, "everything matters." Marketing is integrated with
all aspects of a company's operations -- production, distribution, advertising -- so that the
company can quickly and effectively respond to changes or opportunities in the
marketplace. Marketing is not only directed outward, toward the customer, but also inward,
so that everyone in the organization is fully aware of the company's goals and its strategy
for attaining them. Finally, holistic marketing isn't just about maximizing a company's
financial return. It also takes into account whether the company is acting in society's
broader interest.
An organization will have different departments like sales and marketing, accounting and
finance, R&D and product development and finally HR and operations. Thus, if you want
to implement a holistic marketing concept in your organization, you need to ensure that
R&D and product development take the feedback from marketing and sales to launch the
product which is most likely to attract customers.
On the other hand they need to work closely with accounting and finance to find out the
exact budget for the project. Sales and marketing need to communicate to the HR the right
kind of people that they need, and finally, admin and operations need to devise a plan to
retain these people.
Customer satisfaction:
Differentiation and Positioning are the last steps of the marketing strategy. We know which
customers we want to serve, having segmented the market and targeted the most promising
segment(s). But how are we going to serve the selected customers? This involves
differentiating ourselves from other offerings in the market: Differentiation. Also, we aim
at a position in the market and in customers minds: Positioning.
Differentiation and Positioning are strongly related and depend on each other. Positioning,
which is the process of arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive and desirable
place relative to competing products in the minds of target customers, depends on the
differentiation, and vice versa. Because through the differentiation, which is the process of
actually differentiating the product to create superior customer value, we can achieve the
desired position in customers minds.
Brand loyalty
The current trends in marketing research highlight four rather distinct quadrants in which
work is conducted. A simplified overview is shown below
Historically, most marketing research has fallen into what Im calling the Sociologic
quadrant participants know theyre in a test environment and they often interact with an
interviewer/moderator + other participants; additionally, verbal skills often have a
prominent role.
Physiologic testing has been around for years. It measures a physical response to test
stimulus, such as eye tracking when conducting a copy test or website evaluation.
Ethnographic (or observational) research, with its roots in anthropology, has become quite
popular in recent years. In its purist form, participants dont know theyre being observed
and less emphasis is placed on verbal responses.
Discourse Analysis is the newest approach, and is currently the hottest topic in marketing
circles. These methods analyze social media, such as postings on Facebook, Twitter and
personal blogs, by studying the language used.