Sales and marketing department performs market research, develops promotional plans and manages personal selling strategies. Marketing is a separate function from sales. Marketing does the research and strategic communication planning, while the sales section implements selling-specific promotional strategies.
Marketing functions include research and development, pricing, distribution, customer service, sales and communications. In its narrowest form, a sales section advises the marketing section based on its feedback with customers and focuses on customer contact to drive sales. The marketing section’s research function sheds light on shifts in customer demand.
Marketing and sales can help translate customer demand into product specifications. These definitions can include color choices, package sizes, feature modifications and even shifts to a new product line. The sales targets are generated by the Sales & Marketing team based on the expected overall revenue targets of the company for the year.
These targets are broken down to products per market/customer based on past sales history, customer/market demand, promotional efforts and government policy changes. The department has an SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) that describes the guidelines followed in sales forecasting by the Sales and Marketing department. It also has an SOP for Customer order processing.