There are a lot of parallels between marketing and sales. And all too often, the same mistakes are made in both areas as well. One frequent mistake is the hard sell.

The hard sell is when you really push your product or service in a forceful, insistent way. It's something that comes from traditional sales and marketing. In Sandler, we don't believe that's a good technique.

One of our Sandler Rules talks about how prospecting shouldn't be about hard selling. It's Sandler Rule #8: When Prospecting, Go for the Appointment.

Prospecting should be about uncovering whether someone is qualified to have a conversation about your product or service. It is not about actually selling it.

The same thing is true when it comes to marketing! Depending on how you frame it, marketing is either another form of prospecting, or it feeds into prospecting. Either way, it's not the place in your sales cycle for actual selling yet!

We've talked before about marketing your monkey's paws, and that's definitely a good idea. But even then, your whole point is to start a conversation with a qualified prospect.

After all, how can you determine if someone is a true prospect without having a conversation with them?

It's easy for marketers to get caught up in tracking milestones like social media audience size or hits on a website. But ultimately, the goal of marketing is to have conversations with more and better qualified prospects.

Are you tracking how your marketing is helping you have more, better conversations?