Unlike most consumer products, selling services such as accounting, real estate and architecture involve higher involvement and a longer process, especially highly regulated professions like law and medicine. Knowing the difference between the tasks involved can help. There are three basic components to the sales cycle - marketing, business development and client development. These three disciplines are separate, yet inter-dependent. This is a slide deck I created to illustrate the difference. Credit for the concept is often attributed to an article in Reader's Digest, which is in the public domain - publication date unknown.