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Abstract
The sales and marketing integration has a direct and significant impact on customers and the revenue-earning potential of the organization. This research demonstrates the benefits of a close integration between sales and marketing and evaluates its impact on the organization performance. Sales and marketing integration is a complex and multi-faceted construct and hence requires strategic approach for its evaluation. This study aims to understand how to achieve sales and marketing integration by focusing its facilitators and controlling distracters. This study focuses on how collaboration between sales and marketing improves business performance rather than evaluating its consequences. Hence, this research focuses on drivers of sales and marketing integration for creating superior customer value. Various models of this paper aim at providing guidelines for sales and marketing managers for building competitive advantages by achieving sales and marketing integration.
Key Words : sales; marketing; collaboration, integration; organization culture, customer value proposition
Significant research efforts have been devoted to considering co-operation and collaboration between functional departments in organizations, based on the premise that interdepartmental collaboration is linked to improving business performance. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the interdepartmental relationship between sales and marketing as compared to other functional relationships with marketing. Only recently, sales and marketing interaction has gained more conceptual attention. Sales and marketing interface exhibits one of the most contentious relationships within organizations and is one that is attracting increasing attention from both academicians and practitioners.
The sales and marketing interface has a direct and significant impact on customers and the revenue-earning potential of the organization. Collaboration between sales and marketing may be important in reducing inter-functional conflict and creating high performance. There is need to have collaboration between sales and marketing to alleviate their behavioural conflicts. Hence, every organization should improve the relationship between sales and marketing.
The major objectives of this paper are firstly; to introduce sales and marketing integration as a process which combines the strengths of sales and marketing by shifting the focus to the customer; secondly; to demonstrate how such integration can leverage the strengths of sales and marketing, and meet the challenges of customer value creation in today's fast changing and highly competitive marketplace and thirdly; to suggest research framework of sales and marketing integration...