The marketing-sales border

• Q: Please tell me if a marketing manager and a sales manager are one and the same.

Milon Chatterjee

• A: No, there is a difference between being a marketing manager and being a sales manager. Let me explain what each of them does, so that you can get a clear picture.

Marketing managers determine the demand for products and services offered by a firm and its competitors and identify potential customers. They develop pricing strategies in order to maximise the company’s profits or market share while ensuring that the customers are satisfied. They also oversee product development or monitor trends that indicate the need for new products and services.

Sales managers, on the other hand, direct the actual distribution or movement of a product or service to the customer. They coordinate the sales distribution by establishing sales territories, quotas, and goals and establish training programmes for sales representatives. They analyse sales statistics gathered by staff to determine sales potential and inventory requirements and monitor customer preferences. Sales managers often rise from the ranks.

Most management institutes, including Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Indian Institute of Planning and Management, New Delhi, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and Goa Institute of Management, Goa, offer courses on marketing and sales under their postgraduate management programmes.

Other institutes that offer diplomas or courses in marketing management are the Institute of Marketing and Management, New Delhi, Annamalai University, Annamalai, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, National Open School of Management Studies, Chennai, and the Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai.

From a diploma to a BE degree

• Q: I am doing a diploma in mechanical engineering and would like to join a BE degree programme. Please advise.

Niloy Gogoi

• A: Hundreds of engineering colleges offer lateral entry directly to the second year BE/BTech programmes to diploma holders. For many of these colleges, however, you have to be a resident of that state. Colleges affiliated to UP Technical University or University of Lucknow offer this facility.

If you are employed, you can also do a part-time, four-year BE from an engineering college or acquire a BS degree by distance mode from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, distance learning programme division, Pilani. Or, you could take the examination for associate membership of the Institution of Engineers, India (sections A and B taken together are equivalent to BE/BTech).

Frame by frame, putting it together

• Q: What exactly does a film editor do? Is the work very technical? Which institutes offer courses on this subject?

Mandira Sharma

• A: Film or video editors edit motion picture soundtracks and videos. I am listing some of the key tasks routinely performed by them.

You can decide if you’d like to make a career of it:

Discuss the layout or editing approaches needed to increase the dramatic or entertainment value of the film or TV programme with producers and directors.

Cut shot sequences to different angles at specific points in scenes, making each individual cut as fluid and seamless as possible.

Determine the audio and visual effects, and the music required to complete the film.

Edit films and videotapes to insert music, dialogue, and sound effects, to arrange the film into sequences, and to correct errors, using hi-tech editing equipment.

Manipulate the plot, musical score, sound, and graphics to make the parts into a continuous whole, working closely with people in audio, visual, music, optical and/or special effects departments.

Mark frames where a particular sound is to begin or end. Organise and string together raw footage into a continuous whole according to scripts and/or the instructions of directors and producers.

Mix sounds together to develop film soundtracks.

Review the assembled film or edited videotape on the screen or monitor to determine if corrections are necessary.

Review the footage sequence by sequence in order to become familiar with it before assembling it into a final product.