Sales and Marketing

Article Overview:

In many companies, Sales and Marketing dispute like Capulet’s and Montague’s. Sales people accuse marketers of being out of touch with what customers really want or setting prices too high. Marketers insist that sales people focus too shortsightedly on individual customers and short-term sales at the expense of longer-term profits. This results in poor coordination between the two sales & Marketing teams. Which only raises market-entry costs, lengthens sales cycles, and increases cost of sales. This article discusses how we can get the sales and marketing teams work together in a company. Kotler, Rackham, and Krishnaswamy recommend constructing a new relationship between them, one with the right degree of interconnection to challenge your most persistent business challenges. For example, if the market was more customized, then we can align Sales and Marketing through frequent, disciplined cross-functional communication and joint projects. In case of more complex competition, teams can be fully integrated by having them share performance metrics, rewards and embedding marketers deeply in management of key accounts. The ultimate goal remains to create the right relationship between Sales and Marketing, and reduce internal backbiting, enabling these former opponents to boost top and bottom line growth, together.

The sales force can be both a rich source of market intelligence and a key vehicle for implementing marketing strategy. Historically, in many organizations, the sales function functioned in strategic segregation from marketing strategy. Increasingly, companies are now exploring the advantages of integrating sales with marketing. An approach which has been positively linked with improvements in business performance. This article explores a specific aspect of making sales and marketing integration and yield better performance; specifically whether the integration of the sales and marketing