Article for Students 

The title of this article is a question I want you to ask yourself regularly until you find an answer — your own, unique, and exclusive answer. Here I want to share with you, based on my personal and professional experience, what I have seen that successful people in this discipline have in common.

According to Kotler and Keller (2022), the marketer creates, promotes, delivers, and maintains value in the market they serve in an ethical manner, fulfilling their responsibility not only to their supervisors within the company and their clients outside of it, but to all the stakeholders impacted by their value generation.

But how do you know that this is what you want to dedicate yourself to? Perhaps you have been told to follow your passion, but according to Newport (2012), that is bad advice — passion is not necessarily discovered, it is built through practice, as you become good at something you enjoy that positively impacts others. So instead of searching for passion, ask yourself: what are your skills? Which ones do you recognize in yourself and have practiced over a period of time? Beware of the trap of looking for something you are passionate about before committing to anything — according to Newport (2012), passion is the result of your daily commitment and work on something where you apply your skills and have learned to do productively.

Why Study Marketing and Sales?

Because it can be an intellectually stimulating discipline, drawing from many fields for your daily work. Day to day you will use psychology, research, basic finance, project management, planning, strategy, communication, writing, analytics, data analysis, decision-making, problem-solving, social media, technology, and artificial intelligence — just to name some of the tools that make up the modern marketer's professional toolkit.

For what purpose? In broad terms, to help a company create, market, deliver, and maintain product or service offerings — or both — that generate value in the consumer's life.

From Where Can It Be Practiced?

This can be achieved at a small company, where you will be in charge of all marketing functions. It can be achieved at a medium or large company, where you will first be part of a team working in a specific area, and over time, through promotions, you may reach a position leading the company's marketing efforts. Another avenue is starting your own marketing company from scratch, making all the decisions yourself. And yet another is dedicating yourself full-time to academia, researching and teaching the discipline. You have many options — and you can move between them until you find your right fit.

And the great advantage of studying marketing and sales: according to NACE (2024), today's employers seek precisely the characteristics the modern marketer possesses — critical thinking, effective communication, and problem-solving.

The Questions That Matter

Why do you want to study marketing and sales? What do you like about the discipline? What areas within marketing catch your attention the most? The more you learn about what marketers actually do, the better positioned you will be to discover what you want to dedicate yourself to.

Remember: it is not necessarily easy, and it does not happen overnight. It took me from age 17, when I started college, until I was 25 — nearly 8 years — to find my path in marketing and sales. There is no set timeline. It may be shorter or longer. It is different for everyone, but questioning yourself will help you move in the right direction to find your answer.

Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? Something important: throughout your career you will change jobs more than 5 times, and now with the impact of artificial intelligence, perhaps more. But those changes are not necessarily changes in discipline — they are changes in companies, including the launch of your own if that is what you desire.

Remember to avoid the trap of pursuing this discipline only for the money. According to Pink (2009), monetary motivation is not enough for the creative and intellectual professional — what truly sustains a long-term career is autonomy, the freedom to experiment, becoming good at what you do, and having a clear why that gives you purpose. Along the same lines, Twedt (2024) suggests that instead of searching for a grand life purpose, you focus on something more concrete and actionable: what do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? Those two questions, more than any sudden revelation, are what build a meaningful career.

Becoming an expert in any discipline does not happen overnight. According to Gladwell (2008), being good at something requires a great deal of time practicing that activity consistently and deliberately — so do not get discouraged if things are not immediately clear at the start.

Learn Before You Graduate

So how can you practice this discipline while still in college to discover if it is truly what you want to dedicate yourself to? Doing professional internships is enormously helpful, as it allows you — before graduating — to see if this discipline is right for you. You will learn from good and bad bosses, from good and bad coworkers. You will learn from your mistakes and your successes. You will make mistakes, you will fail — that is normal, we all do. But what matters, and what not everyone does, is learning from those mistakes, correcting them, and doing better next time. According to Dweck (2006), those who grow professionally are the ones who develop a growth mindset: they recognize their mistakes not as failures, but as learning opportunities.

We are always learning. Marketing is dynamic — we never stop learning. Being curious, intuitive, entrepreneurial, and creative are characteristics I have seen that the best marketers and sales professionals have in common.

My Philosophy and My Invitation

To close: it is my personal and professional philosophy to dedicate myself equally to marketing and to sales — and that is the motivation behind opening this company and fostering knowledge of both disciplines, which are deeply integrated. Many of you will dedicate yourselves solely to marketing, others to professional sales, and others to both — primarily in small companies, which make up the majority. Both, though integrated, have their differences, which we will address in another article.

I wish you great success in your intellectual reflection on how to know whether marketing and sales is right for you. I hope you find the answer you are looking for.

I would love to hear from you: what other topic would you like us to write about for marketing and sales students?

References

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown and Company.

Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2022). Marketing management (16th ed.). Pearson.

National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2024). Job Outlook 2025. NACE. https://www.naceweb.org/research/reports/job-outlook/2025

Newport, C. (2012). So good they can't ignore you. Grand Central Publishing.

Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Riverhead Books.

Twedt, D. W. (2024, April). Your career doesn't need to have a purpose. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/04/your-career-doesnt-need-to-have-a-purpose

Author: Dr. Carlos Valdez. Date: March 2026. Editorial assistance: Claude Sonnet 4.6 — proofreading, grammar correction, research and academic reference verification. Image generated with: Gemini 3 Nano Banana. Publication: Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas. © All rights reserved. Revista Mercadotecnia y Ventas 2026. Reproduction without the author's permission is prohibited. Editorial syndication: This content is available for syndication. For licensing or collaboration inquiries, contact: carlos.valdez@mercadotecniayventas.com