Marketing vs. Sales: How to Set Them Up When You’re Starting Out

When you’re just starting a business, marketing and sales often blur together. But understanding the difference and setting them up the right way can make all the difference between struggling to find clients and building a steady pipeline.

In this episode, we break down what marketing really is, what sales really is, and how they work together to bring clients into your world and convert them into loyal customers. We also share why marketing done well can make sales almost effortless, and how to set up both when you’re doing it all yourself in the early days.

We cover:

• Why marketing is about attracting attention and building know, like, and trust
• How sales turns that trust into paying customers
• Why good marketing speaks to problems, benefits, and outcomes, not just features
• How to use sales conversations as market research when you’re starting out
• Why you must keep marketing and selling even while delivering (or risk running dry)
• The one mistake new founders often make that leaves their pipeline empty

If you’ve ever wondered how to balance marketing and sales as a small business owner, this conversation will give you clarity and practical next steps.

Ready to set up marketing and sales systems that actually work together? Apply to work with us at Leficomp. We’ll help you build clarity, attract the right clients, and close with confidence.
Click here to apply

“Even when you’re delivering, don’t stop marketing and selling or your pipeline will run dry.” – Anna Angelova

Transcript for “The Difference Between Marketing and Sales (and How to Set Them Up When You’re Starting)”

The transcript below was automatically generated. Please ignore any errors or inconsistencies in the text.

Anna Angelova   0:05
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, whenever you’re listening, listening to this episode, this is more than just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a thriving business with me, Anna Angelova, business coach and consultant, and my co-host Joris Minusfand, a fellow business.
Sultan. Hey, Joris. Diana. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Can you believe it? It’s like the last Monday of August. Wow. Yeah. Christmas is around the corner. Oh, I know. Didn’t we just go to a Christmas store? Oh, yes. The biggest one in the world. It was.
So amazing and so overwhelming, by the way. Oh, it was very overwhelming. It was too much. It’s like you at some point it. Yeah, at some point it gets too much. They have so many things out there. Santa throwing up on Christmas tree that the entire N both threw up on this store. Oh yeah, it was like, wow. Oh, but I love it. I would love to go back.
It’s really cool. We got a few things from there. I almost forgot what the topic was for today. OK, we’re talking about marketing and sales. Yes, yes. So we’re going to talk about Christmas. What we’re talking about today, marketing, that place was an incredible marketing, sales and.
Closure and return and recurring all wrapped into one. Oh, yes. Oh, oh, especially if you love Christmas. Yeah, yeah. Well, so today what we’re discussing is the difference between marketing and sales.
And how you set them up, especially when you’re starting your business. And the thing is that ultimately when you think about the business, when you’re starting a business, there are three main things, how people find you, how you convert them, turn them into clients or customers.
And delivering like these are delivering things so so but the the three main things are find people like people to find you for you to convert them into customers. So the people who find you, you convert them into customers and then you deliver whatever you promised.
And of course, yeah, like I said, over-delivering, keeping repeat sales and so on. So if you think about marketing and sales, marketing and sales are these first two steps, attracting people. So marketing is all about attracting people for people to.
Find you to get to know you that you exist, what you do and then start to know, know you and like you like this. This is that factor. The know, like and trust factor. You might have already heard about this.
And especially like the more high end product or service you have, the more expensive your product or service is, the more important this is like when it comes to like some smaller transactions, yeah, we can go buy some things that are like a $10.
Whatever lottery ticket from anywhere that offers lottery, right? Like we don’t really care about some of these things, but when you are building like for most businesses, you actually do need to have that know like and trust factor and marketing is where it all starts.
This is how you attract people and then sales is how you convert them. And The thing is that it’s not like there is a specific line where we say, oh, marketing ends here, sales starts there.
Sales takes over from marketing and keeps on building on that know, like and trust factor, keeps on building the relationship. And again, especially when it comes to more expensive products or services, sales takes over and sales is like you said, converting.
It’s about turning that prospect or lead into a client or a customer. And there is one thing that you might have heard that marketing done well makes sales obsolete.
And this is one of the things where like one example is with Apple and and what they do, they don’t even have sales people, what they have in their stores, these are.
Techie geeks or sometimes, sometimes they would even convince you to not buy something. So when you do marketing well, when people know, like and trust you, they’re already sold. They come.
And say I want to buy this and there is a huge difference between selling and buying, but this is a different, a different topic. So yeah, this is where I’m starting and Joris, I want to hear what you will have to say and then we can talk a little bit about setting things up, especially when you’re starting.
So this is what you mentioned about the you mentioned about the lines blurring. So marketing says we have this product, sales says why do you need it and you should buy it.
So and like you said, in the case of Apple, there is no sales because marketing is done so well and they’re targeting such a market that the market says, yes, I need this, I’m going to buy this and this is where. But again, if you have a unique product.
You need to and marketing is what you can automate, but you cannot automate sales. Marketing, you automate it, you push your product out there, find the right target market, you advertise it the right way.
And that’s where I think it’s more of a not focusing on the product, more of a what problem are you solving for your target market. If you can convince them that you’re solving that problem, like I think you mentioned a while back, we’re talking about something that.
When we have a problem in our plumbing, we call a plumber. Yeah, because they solve a specific problem. So don’t focus on the product, on selling your product. Focus on solving the problem for the right audience.
Yeah, for the right audience. And marketing is also like absolutely what you’re saying, like speaking about focusing on the problem, how you’re making life better. And you might have heard also with marketing, it’s a lot about like you don’t talk about features, you focus more on benefits and also outcomes. It’s not just the benefit.
Yeah, it’s not. It’s not just the benefit, it’s also the outcome. And like an example, I don’t know, Mike have mentioned this before, but think about a vacuum cleaner, right? Yes, vacuum cleaners, some of them now they do vacuuming on their own. And like, what’s the benefit of having a vacuum?
Vacuum cleaner. You can clean your condo or something like this. And then the outcome is being to able to enjoy like a healthier environment. Your kids won’t have allergies. Yes, exactly. Yeah, especially if you’re for pet owners.
So there, I think it’s and also certain I forgot the line of of vacuum cleaners. I have it at home. Oh, there’s so many of them. Yeah, Sunny or whatever. They actually, they talk about their product.
Actually, uh, makes you avoid allergies. Yes, not just vacuum, not just outcome, removing outcomes, end results, the end result, the outcome. And that’s what people pay for if there is a vacuum for 200 and vacuum for 1000.
But people, you convince people that $1000 vacuum will stop your people, your children, especially the ones with asthma.
From having asthma attacks and allergies, there you have it. They’ll pay that extra $100. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So again, marketing is about people getting to know that you exist, to start liking you and trusting you and when you do marketing well.
It actually again it when when you do marketing in a way that it speaks to the benefits and the outcomes, it speaks to the heart and.
Due to the identity, even of people, how they see themselves, it makes sales obsolete. Now when we say it makes sales obsolete, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need sales. Of course you need sales. You need people to buy things. You need to offer things to them to for them to be able to come and purchase whatever you you have, whether it’s a product.
Store service. When we say it makes it obsolete, it’s more that you don’t need to convince them. They have already convinced themselves. And The thing is that most of us, we’re not Apple. Most of us, we still need to have sales. We still need to have sales.
To sales, again, depending on what kind of business you have, sometimes sales entails sales conversations where you actually talk with people and you understand what’s going on, what problem they have and you have and especially again if it’s a business where you’re selling.
Something that’s in the thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. People want to really trust you and like these sales conversations, even with good marketing, you need to have the sales conversation and the sales is where you close the deal ultimately where you take the final step for.
Your lead or prospect to to the deposit to give you the credit card to to pay whatever it is you you’re selling.
Oh, absolutely. And one of the things, if you have the right product or service, and if you’re solving the right problem for the right audience, you actually don’t have to sell. Your marketing becomes your sale because people will actually buy it on their own.
Yeah, you don’t have to sell it. They’re convincing. It’s a problem that exists. It requires a solution. Here’s a solution. The right marketing of the right product to the right demographic. That’s it. Sales disappears.
So do I should I put more into marketing or or more more into sale? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. This is something you should try. The best thing is to start with the right marketing mix. Market your product, your service.
Right. Find the right demographic, right market.
That will tell you whether you need sales or not. If people are not still not buying it, then you have people who sales thing that will go out and close the deal. Oh yeah, absolutely. And The thing is that when you are starting, right, when everyone starts, when we started, the bottleneck is that people.
Don’t know you. They don’t know you. They don’t know you exist. They don’t know what you offer. So in the beginning, it makes sense to spend more time and effort to find who’s the right audience. This is very important, Joris. You actually mentioned it a few times. Who’s the right person? Yes, because when you are in front.
Of the right people who have the problem, have the urgency and have the money to to buy. Again, this is also it makes sales so much easier. Imagine trying to sell a new cell phone features to the 50 plus.
They really don’t care. They need a cell phone. They need it as a GPS. They can connect to their grandchildren. But if you are talking about photocropping or document management or.
Air dropping or stuff like that. That’s for the younger generation. So again, find marketing is about how to present your product, how to find the right market target.
That that those two things that said, if you get that right, I think that’s to me that’s 80% of the sales of the process. Yeah, it is, it is. That’s why in the beginning you really, again, you really want to focus on getting in front, understanding who your ideal clients are, get in front of them, see how you can get in front of them.
And then ultimately see what’s happening after that, right, like you said with the sales. So in the beginning, you want to get people to come into your world, people to start knowing you, to start liking you and trusting you. And of course you do want to have some kind of a sales.
Process it can. Depending on how expensive it is, what you do, you might need to have sales conversations regardless, like no matter how big your business is, whether you’re starting or not. In for other cases, you might start with sales conversations initially.
When you are starting the business, you might set it up in the beginning where you have a sales conversation with every person who signs up for your service or who buys your product, even if it’s a small product, because a sales conversation can also serve as a market research tool in a way.
So in the beginning you might structure it this way and then gradually move towards something that’s a little bit more automated, where if you are selling something inexpensive, people just click and buy it on their own and they don’t need to have a conversation with you.
So ultimately again, when you’re setting things up in the beginning, focus on the marketing. Who’s your ideal client? Like where are they? How can you get in front of them in a way that speaks their language and and and really talks to their not just the mind.
Put the heart to to their identity, to how they see themselves. So you can really, really stand out. And as I said, when you’re starting, the easiest thing to do is have a sales conversation, even if it’s a small thing, because again.
Even if you’re selling something that’s $10 or $10 a month, you might want to have conversations with the first people who buy like for them to purchase. So you can understand a little bit more about how did they find you, what’s the problem and listen to really the language there.
Using listen to how they’re expressing, what they’re emphasizing. You might even find out what else they have tried, why they’re coming to you and not to someone else. And after that, as I said, you can transition to a sales process that.
Is like if you sell something for $10 like you know all those SaaS products out there like right now if you just go and sign up like you can see there are different tiers you go and sign up. They still have like chat options where you can chat and sometimes you can even schedule a demo so you can talk with a salesperson or with a sales representative.
But most of their sales come from people just clicking and and buying it on their own directly. But because we were talking about starting the business, like when you are starting, doing things that don’t scale makes a lot of sense.
100% marketing done right, 80 is 80% of the sales process and.
The 20% is when people is for those people who are not convinced that you still your product is for them. These are people who are experts in your product. They believe in your product. They go out and talk to the to the end end users in the market, target market and.
They sort of convinced them that, yes, this is the right product to solve their problem. So and in in the beginning, because also like when we start, we also don’t have that social proof for example, right? Yeah. So people might need a little bit more. Again, it’s not that much convincing, but.
We all need to know, like and trust like when when we buy from somewhere or something, there is that factor, the know, like and trust factor. And in the beginning when we don’t have the social proof, like you said, like people need to need to have that that conversation.
So the.
So there’s marketing sales and then once the sales team steps in, depending on the size of the company, then the sales team is also the one that maintains the customer, solves other problems, that maintains the relationship.
Again, depending on the size, that may go to an account manager who actually maintains the relationship, sales goes back into the. So there are different variations of marketing, sales and account management depending on the size, but at the beginning it’s probably.
You have you need one salesperson, which is probably yourself, but a lot of your marketing can be automated where you can automate your marketing like social media postings. And again, it’s about presence, right? It’s about you going out there and making sure people hear about your product.
Yeah, a lot of things can be automated, including ads, right, direct marketing ads and things like this, direct response marketing ads and things like this. Absolutely a lot of this can be automated. But even when it comes to marketing, like when it comes to finding your people in the beginning.
Beginning this might not be automated either, right? And this is how we started with the outreach to our own network, to people we know to let them know. Oh, by the way, this is what we’re doing. This is an update. And do you know someone?
And this is how we started spreading the word. No automation, no paid ads, no things like this. And then after that, of course, we started adding things gradually. So as I was saying, when you were starting.
Most of your focus in the beginning, like you want to get sales as quickly as possible. You want to get your sales pipeline filled up as quickly as possible. But when it comes to like for people to come into your sales conversations, for people to start buying from you, they need to know you. They need to know what you offer and what you do.
So this is where your most of your focus will be. And again, talk with people. Talk with people who are your ideal clients. Understand what their problem is and go solve it. Go solve it and talk to them again in a way that really speaks to how they see the world, to how they see themselves.
Elves and it’s trial and error. It’s learning and.
Get one sale, get the next sale. And this is one thing actually that I want to wrap up with this and I’ll let you say if there’s anything else you want to share, Joris. But one thing that I made is a mistake in the beginning when when I was starting with some of the business.
Is that I go to for it with coaching, with the coaching aspect, I got a couple of clients and then I stopped my marketing and sales. And this is something that is because chances are when you’re starting your business, it’s only you, you’re doing everything. You’re doing the marketing, you’re doing the sales, you’re.
Doing the delivery and you might you get a couple of sales or a few sales and you’re like oh now it’s time to deliver and you forget about the marketing and the sales. And this is a great book if you have not read it. Highly recommend it. Fanatical prospecting.
Where like as a rule, when it comes to prospecting, like what you do right now, like the 30 days right now, they pay off like 90 days from now, like three months from now, yeah, they pay off in your pipeline, so.
You need to have that constant flow of people coming into your world, the marketing machine working for you, the sales working for you, so you can have that constant sales ultimately and delivery. So this is one thing that.
From my personal experience, as a mistake I made, yes, in the beginning it’s hard because you do everything. But don’t forget like once you get your first sales and start delivering, don’t forget about marketing and sales. You need to keep these things running. You need to keep these things moving forward.
So you can continue and ultimately at some point you of course you want to sell yourself out of all these different positions and get other people to do your marketing, to do your sales and at some point even do the delivery and you are just a business owner.
But in the beginning you need to do all this and do the groundwork, do the things that don’t scale.
And nobody likes marketing and sales, but you have to do it. Especially sales. Yeah, especially sales. But you have to do it. You need to build a thick skin in hearing the word no and play the numbers again if you’re into sales. However, sales without good.
Back up from marketing. It’s not gonna go anywhere. Um uh.
Marketing focuses on the the the. There’s a big disconnect from marketing. I I I’m seeing it almost every day.
Sales should not dictate to marketing what to do. It’s the other way around. Marketing should know the product. Marketing should know what problem is is being solved. Marketing should know the which market to target.
Where the sales people come in at the last minute to either open the door or or make that connection and convert it and make it into a selling customer.
However, a lot of times I’ve seen, especially in the corporate world, the marketing teams have become administrators where the sales guy take that initiative while going out there and opening the doors, making the connections and and then the marketing comes and says, Oh yeah, I need well, sales guy says, well I need.
Deck with with the ABC and D and the marketing is so disconnected from what is actually being sold and what the services are. It’s it’s it’s just.
Says ends U doing all the work.
So it it’s important at the beginning for a startup and a small company, make sure that it’s your marketing and sales know what they’re doing, they know what their responsibilities are.
And they know what they need to do. But marketing is go out there and go to as many events. Marketing to me is mostly like event generation. Well, there are a lot of marketing strategies. Events is one thing, absolutely. Social media, online advertising, webinars.
Seminars, Rd. shows, Yeah, where I see so many places, even even billboards, PR, PR, like these are all different marketing strategies. And I think there are so many ways of doing that. Marketing is about getting in front of the right people through the right channels. Like it’s about the right message with the right.
Message. So people get to know you first. They know that you exist and and this is what you are doing. Get to like you so they resonate. Somehow you resonate with them, they resonate with you and start to trust you that all you you actually care for the solution that I need.
And sales continues that process and close ultimately finishes finishes that.
From from someone who didn’t know you to a prospect or a lead to to a customer. And one thing I I want to say like when it comes to like in the beginning, especially in small businesses, it’s not just in the beginning.
Ultimately everyone is in marketing and sales the way, the way every single person. So even if you’re not just starting, even if you are already in relatively established business with like a small business, right, we went to.
This morning we went to a breakfast place, a small business breakfast place where ultimately, if you think about it, like every single person there, the waitress, the chef, like they’re all in marketing and sales.
Like how they show up, how they treat us as as customers, it really matters. And a lot of times, because when you think about marketing and and sales, we’re thinking in terms of the corporate world that there are people whose responsibility is doing marketing, people whose responsibility is sales.
And that’s it. When it comes to small business, we are all in marketing and sales. It’s one unit. We are all in marketing and sales and we all have the responsibility of spreading the word and of helping the right people know.
Like and trust the business. This is it. Ultimately, this is what marketing and sales do. They make the right people know, help the right people know, like and trust the business to a level where they say, yes, I want to buy this.
Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, yeah.
I don’t know if there’s anything else. I don’t know. It’s been a long conversation for a Monday. Like, I think it’s almost 30 minutes, but like the topic of marketing and sales, we can talk about it probably all day long. And yeah, yeah, there’s so much there and I don’t want to go on too many tangents.
If you have any questions, again, feel free, ask in the comments, reach out to us as well and we’ll be back tomorrow with the next episode where we will be talking about outsourcing IT versus building internal capacity.
So this is more if you are like if you have an established business, this is a conversation that you might want to listen to, especially if you are at a stage where you’re considering this. If you’re just starting, it’s not time yet to think about this.
Yeah, tomorrow we’re talking about when you should outsource your IT versus building internal capacity.
Thank you. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. And yeah, have a wonderful rest of the day and a wonderful week ahead. And remember to join us tomorrow for another conversation to help you build a thriving business. You’re doing a great job. And again, if there is anything.