Marketing

creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders." Marketing practice tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research. The scientific study of marketing is a wide and heavily interconnected subject with extensive academic publications. Marketing methods are also informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts.

Sales

A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity. The "deal is closed", means the customer has consented to the proposed product or service by making full or partial payment (as in case of installments) to the seller. A sale is completed by the seller, the owner of the goods. It starts with consent (or agreement) to an acquisition or appropriation or request followed by the passing of title (property or ownership) in the item and the application and due settlement of a price, the obligation for which arises due to the seller's requirement to pass ownership, being a price the seller is happy to part with ownership of or any claim upon the item. The purchaser, though a party to the sale does not execute the sale, only the seller does that. To be precise the sale completes prior to the payment and gives rise to the obligation of payment. If the seller completes the first two above stages (consent and passing ownership) of the sale prior to settlement of the price the sale is still valid and gives rise to an obligation to pay.

The Sales and Marketing Relationship

Marketing and Sales are very different, but have the same goal. Marketing improves the selling environment and plays a very important role in sales. If the marketing department generates a potential customers list, it can be beneficial for sales. The marketing department's goal is increase the number of interactions between potential customers and the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations, creating new sales channels, or creating new products (new product development), among other things. In most large corporations, the marketing department is structured in a similar fashion to the sales department [citation needed] and the managers of these teams must coordinate efforts in order to drive profits and business success. For example, an "inbound" focused campaign seeks to drive more customers "through the door" giving the sales department a better chance of selling their product to the consumer. A good marketing program would address any potential downsides as well. For example, very often (for legal reasons, e.g. in non-store retailing) companies have to provide credit to customers. This may cause a conflict between the sales department on the one hand and the credit department on the other hand (See Burez & Van den Poel (2007) for potential solutions to this problem. [5]). A good marketing plan would recognize this problem and address it by, for example, target marketing where credit risk is minimal.

The Sales department's goal would be to improve the interaction between the customer and the sales facility or mechanism (example, web site) and/or salesperson. Sales management would break down the selling process and then increase the effectiveness of the discreet processes as well as the interaction between processes. For example, in many out-bound sales environments, the typical process is out bound calling, the sales pitch, handling objections, opportunity identification, and the close. Each step of the process has sales-related issues, skills, and training needs as well as marketing solutions to improve each discrete step, as well as the whole process.

Career

Selling, retailing, advertising and market research offer avenues to marketing professionals. Jobs in selling offer independence, possibly high monetary incentives, and greater opportunities for advancement. Retailing careers generally mean merchandising or retail management. Marketing graduates wanting to work in advertising can look at firms that advertise their services or products, including media companies. Market researchers work in consumer and market research firms. Marketing graduates are required and hired by practically all companies. A few of the job titles are listed below.

• Assistant Brand Manager

• Product Manager

• Marketing Manager

• Marketing Director / Vice President-Marketing.

Famous personalities

Neil H. McElroy, ex-president of Procter & Gamble

Born in Berea, Ohio, to school-teacher parents, McElroy grew up in the Cincinnati area. After receiving a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard in 1925, he returned to Cincinnati to work in the advertising department of the Procter & Gamble Company. He advanced rapidly up the managerial ladder and became company president in 1948. Although a well known businessman, Neil McElroy changed marketing forever when he wrote the classic McElroy memo at P&G, which lead to the creation of the discipline of brand management. The shift to brand management began on May 13, 1931, with an internal memorandum from Neil McElroy (1904-1972), an athletic young man who had come to P&G in 1925 right after his graduation from Harvard College. While working on the advertising campaign for Camay soap, McElroy became frustrated with having to compete not only with soaps from Lever and Palmolive, but also with Ivory, P&G's own flagship product. In a now-famous memo, he argued that more concentrated attention should be paid to Camay, and by extension to other P&G brands as well. In addition to having a person in charge of each brand, there should be a substantial team of people devoted to thinking about every aspect of marketing it. This dedicated group should attend to one brand and it alone. The new unit should include a brand assistant, several "check-up people," and others with very specific tasks.

The concern of these managers would be the brand, which would be marketed as if it were a separate business. In this way the qualities of every brand would be distinguished from those of every other. In ad campaigns, Camay and Ivory would be targeted to different consumer markets, and therefore would become less competitive with each other. Over the years, "product differentiation," as businesspeople came to call it, would develop into a key element of marketing. McElroy's memo ran to a terse three pages, in violation of President Deupree's model of the "one-page memo," a P&G custom that had become well known in management circles. But the content of the memo made good sense, and its proposals were approved up the corporate hierarchy and endorsed with enthusiasm by Deupree. Thus was born the modern system of brand management. It was widely emulated, and in one form or another was still followed in the early twenty-first century by many consumer-products companies throughout the world. Typically, brand managers were energetic young executives marked for bright futures within a company. All of Procter & Gamble's own CEOs after Deupree had brand-management experience. This group included Neil McElroy himself, who headed the company after Deupree retired in 1948, and who in 1957 became Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower.

Brand management as a business technique was one of the signal innovations in American marketing during the twentieth century. It epitomized the persistent theme of balancing centralized oversight with decentralized decision making based on who in the company had the best information about the decision at hand.

Rob Morgan, Marketing director, Golden Wonder

Rob Morgan is a man accustomed to winning. This is evident not only from his senior marketing involvement in highly successful brand leaders such as Kellogg, Boots and Cadbury, but also in the purposeful way he strides through the offices of his ad agency, J Walter Thompson. With his impeccable CV, suit and manners, 46-year-old Morgan seems a daunting figure. Yet it soon becomes apparent that, despite his thirst for competition, the Golden Wonder marketing director is, as JWT's head of planning, Hilde Oord, puts it, 'a delightful man with real integrity; an oasis of calm in a storm'. These traits are evident throughout the interview, as he deftly deals with each question. Morgan is central to chief executive Edward Jackson's vision of making Golden Wonder famous again. 'Jackson's approach was to bring in hired guns who, without sounding pompous, were almost over-qualified for the jobs they were doing, but could turn the business around,' says Morgan.

The timing worked well: Morgan wanted to leave Boots, where he felt he was making a 'limited impact', and was keen to get his hands dirty working for a challenger brand. Morgan perceives Golden Wonder as 'a collection of brands that have fallen on hard times, but are still popular with the people' and is keen to maximize their potential. He has faced up to the task with a media budget much smaller than he is accustomed to, but Morgan clearly welcomes the prospect of taking on the might of Walkers with limited means and a lot of ingenuity. There's a long way to go; Walkers has a 50% share of the �2bn UK crisps and snacks market, compared with Golden Wonder's 5%. 'Walkers are a powerful player driven by an adversarial company,' he says with relish. 'We have to do things on much smaller budgets and find more clever solutions to get the message across'.

The recent relaunch of Ringos, for example, was buoyed by a minimum-spend PR campaign of which Morgan is particularly proud. This involved a postman in Preston, who independently set up a website to lobby Golden Wonder to bring back his beloved crisp. Morgan said it would do so if the man could get 10,000 hits. He managed more than 12,000, and the rest is tabloid history.

Morgan acknowledges the size of the challenge - his favourite word - faced by Golden Wonder. Perhaps surprisingly, Morgan's goals for the company do not include becoming number one, ahead of Walkers. He believes both brands can sit comfortably side by side. 'We don't need Walkers to fail for us to succeed.' With a marketing team of five (at Boots, he was in charge of 300 staff), his strategy is to emphasize the 'colorful' nature of the company's brands, and use people's nostalgic affection for Nik Naks, Wheat Crunchies and Ringos to create a genuine alternative to Walkers across the UK geographically, stretching the brand from its Scottish origins.

Given this approach, is Morgan interested in buying back the distinctive Wotsits brand, which it sold to Walkers for �150m in July 2002? 'If we had our time again would we have sold? Probably not,' he admits, adding that he doesn't believe reclaiming Wotsits is now the right move. 'We've got enough on our plates developing other brands.' One issue facing all Morgan's brands as he seeks to build sales is the obesity crisis and its effect on Golden Wonder. He believes the child obesity problem partly stems from children having too much choice and adds that schools should offer only one meal to stop them eating unhealthily. 'Children should be told: eat this or go hungry,' he says. His rationale is that, given the option, kids will choose the least healthy food, no matter what they are told to the contrary. 'You could have David Beckham endorsing Brussels sprouts, but if a kid doesn't like them, he won't eat them.'

And what part can Golden Wonder play? 'Our role is to develop brands and provide what people require. As brand leader, Walkers quite rightly bears the responsibility,' says Morgan. 'It's refreshing not to be on the front line.'

Horoscope - Career for Zodiac Signs

So if you are interested in a career in sales and marketing field just check out these sun signs which are in most favour of this industry.

Gemini

Leo

Libra

Eligibility : Click here for more information

Institutes : Some of the prominent institutions offering courses in Marketing can be had from the following links.. Click here for more information