The sales and marketing world will probably disagree with me on this.

But I stand by my firm belief that the primary function of marketing is not to assist in sales.

Instead, it’s to win people over. 

And winning people over is not just about customers who might buy and increase your sales and accelerate your profits.

That’s definitely a very important outcome. 

But even for that to happen, you still need a team of people who’ll believe in you and your brand enough to come and work with you, build that buyable product, and facilitate future sales.

In my opinion, marketing should primarily be aimed at winning the following people over in this order:

1. Co-founders to agree to combine forces with you
2. Focus groups to validate your assumptions
3. Core team to build out a Minimum Lovable Product
4. Sales and marketing team to roll out the initial offering to free and paid users
5. Full team to build out the full product
6. Investors/angels to raise sufficient funds
7. Prospects and customers to increase sales and accelerate profits

But why do we think that marketing is only for #7?