What is the Difference Between Selling and Marketing?

Many people interchange these two words, selling and marketing. But here's the difference:

Selling is something you do when you're talking a prospect.

Marketing is what you do to get the opportunity to talk to a prospect.

Effective Marketing is when you are only talking to people who are:
1) already interested in your cleaning services (referrals)
2) motivated to buy
3) pre-qualified (you researched who you wanted to market to instead of marketing to everyone)

When you market your cleaning business effectively, it makes selling easy and in many cases it makes selling unnecessary.

One of our members at The Janitorial Store recently went to give a proposal on cleaning a home. She rang the bell, introduced herself and the homeowner said, "It's really just a matter of working out a schedule. When can you start?" How easy was that!

The reason it was so easy is because her husband had previously cleaned his carpet and provided such great customer service that he immediately thought of their company when he wanted a house cleaning service. This person was already interested in their service and was motivated to buy (number's 1 and 2 above).

How effective is YOUR marketing? Click on the Comments link below to post your replies.

 

Comments

[Cleaning Business Marketing]

I think that is a valuable for cleaning business owners to appreciate the difference.

Marketing can include many things that bring in targeted prospects from brand development (making it easier to sell to people in the future), pricing, product packaging and advertising.

Selling is the latter step in the process - actually signing up the customer, closing the deal usually face to face and sometimes over the phone.

Both parts are essential and a weakness in one area can cause both to fail.