Some rivalries have reached legendary status.

Lakers-Celtics. Tom & Jerry. The Hatfields & the McCoys. Sales & Marketing.

Everyone knows they don’t get along. But why is that? I have a guess.

It's because they’re the same thing.

I know, I know. I know what you’re thinking…blasphemy! But hear me out.

Marketing is sales. Sales is marketing.

Two words. Same goal. Different paths to get there.

They're not arguing about the big stuff. They're arguing about the details that identities get tied to.

Let's go back to Lakers-Celtics. When fans of those teams get to arguing, they’re not arguing about whether or not basketball is a good sport or the NBA is a version of the game worth watching. They’ve already agreed on that to the point that they’re willing to argue about a detail within that conversation. Which team is better? (Answer: Celtics. Duh.)

That is what the identities get tied to. That is where the details are.

The details may be different, but the goal is the same:

Grow customers, grow the business, grow the brand.

Like I said earlier, the two take different paths. Those paths diverge along scale and focus.

Marketing is a one-to-many channel. It's about scale. Reaching as many people as possible in your target market. By focusing on aspirations.

Sales, on the other hand, is one-on-one. It's very specific. The salesperson can know the specific problem and cater the pitch and the solution to that problem and that individual.

Small scale versus large scale. Nothing wrong with either, but it is one of the primary differences between the two.

To be reductive:

• Marketing is about opening the door.
• Sales is about closing the deal.

To do these, they use different messages.

Marketing is selling a vision. It’s what your life could become. It's what it would be like to be part of this group.

Sales is selling a solution. You have a problem. I have the fix for that problem.

At this point, what drives this fake dichotomy is the behaviors and attitudes institutionalized by corporations. Large corporations are dinosaurs. Holdovers from an era where marketing was fuzzy —as John Wanamaker (allegedly) said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."—and deals had to be done in person. Or at least person-to-person.

The modern internet changed that. To shop on Amazon, you don’t talk to an Amazon salesperson. You don’t sit through a pitch meeting before signing up for Uber. Or Instagram. Or Spotify.

For organizations with well-functioning sales teams, marketing can work to scale that expertise and approach across digital channels.

Because marketing is sales. And sales is marketing.

But in the end, it's all storytelling.

That’s it. It’s stories all the way down.

The story of marketing is a promise of belonging.

This is for people like you. This is Seth Godin stuff. You're selling something larger than the individual. Marketing is about creating a group that your target audience wants to be involved in.

The story of sales is a promise of a solution.

This isn't about group identity. This isn't about making someone feel like they're part of something. This is having a one-to-one relationship, knowing what the problem is, and saying “this will solve your problem”.

In both cases, you are making promises. In both cases, you have to deliver on those promises. Same same.

Promise creation, promise delivery. Expectation creation, expectation delivery.

Over-deliver and you’ve done it right. Under-deliver and you’ve failed.

There’s a lot of overlap between the two functions and distinctions get fuzzier the closer you get to the edges. Marketing is more a numbers game while sales is more focused on relationships. You can truly only sell 1 person at a time. You can market to far more than 1 person at a time.

At their core though, they are both about storytelling, positioning, and answering the audience’s unvoiced concerns.

As Morgan Housel says, Everything is sales. And as I say, sales is marketing. You do the math.