One of my friends made a statement ‘People buy leads, and they search for vendors’. This casual statement set me thinking and I was trying to figure out the significance of this statement with respect to IT service providers. IT service providers in the traditional sense would fall under the vendors category and they still do prospecting as the active sales tool as opposed to marketing.

To set the context clear, let us define marketing and prospecting. Marketing is a set of activities that are done at the organizational level towards attracting leads, and prospecting is a set of activities that sales employs towards identifying prospective leads from their target segments. Marketing is strategic in nature and prospecting is tactical in nature.  

Most IT services companies are focused on tactical prospecting as it is measurable and tangible in the short run. They dont really spend a lot of energy in being found at places where their customers are likely to look for them, essentially they don’t position themselves as a vendor. This is where marketing, especially thought leadership marketing plays a key role that allows them to position themselves favourably in market places where customers look to find them.

Sales definitely needs to do prospecting and marketing obviously needs to do thought leadership. In cases, where the scale is small and there is no demarcation between marketing and sales, it is better to do marketing than prospecting.  Though a fine balance will be ideal and in my mind, the balance should be 65-35 in favour of marketing as opposed to prospecting.