Sustainable Business Transformation

Answer by Hemant Puthli:

Thanks for the ask to answer.

A sales strategy is a subset of a business strategy. Profit-oriented enterprises exist to make a profit so that they can deliver the return on investment to their shareholders. The way to make profit is to ensure that there is an income inflow that is consistently greater than the expense outflow.

A sales strategy focuses on setting up the necessary ingredients that will achieve (and hopefully exceed) the targeted sales volume such that it will result in the desired income inflow. It doesn't concern itself with the other half of the problem i.e. how to control outgoing costs and expenses so that they remain less than the incoming revenue.

A business strategy looks at the entire picture – how to increase revenue while also decreasing costs. This in turn may involve a variety of dependencies such as how to stoke customer needs and satisfy customer expectations; how to innovate and come out with new/ improved products and services; how to improve the quality of existing products and services; how to price them at optimal price points; how to procure from reliable suppliers; how to meet employees' needs for career growth; how to manage the brand and what it means to the external world, and so on and so forth.

Trust this clarifies.

What is the difference between business strategy and sales strategy?