Q: As a salesperson, should I also learn marketing?
In the start-up world, the earlier stage the startup, the more most roles overlap with other roles.
In sales,
- at 100 sales reps, there is no overlap between sales and marketing. You do your scheduled meetings, you hit your number, you answer the standard 10 objections and talking points, you ship the collateral you are given. But …
- at 1 -2 sales reps though … it is so different. The sales team is building their own lists. Making their own collateral. Running the webinars. Doing customer marketing, etc etc.
The same is true in other functional areas. In the early days, for example, Customer Success will do some bug fixing, a lot of product idea sourcing, a lot of customer marketing, systems building, and especially a lot of bringing deep product expertise to her accounts. But later, when the CS team is big … they often won’t even really understand how the product works. No joke.
So if you want to thrive in the < 30 employee world, you need to understand all the adjacent stuff to your role, and maybe even own some of it.
If that’s you in sales … then yes, learn a little marketing. As much as you have time for.
