Creating Effective Sales and Marketing Relationships

CHAPTER 7

Optimizing the Sales and Marketing Interface

Introduction

Defining the most effective relationship between sales and marketing personnel has consistently presented organizations with a number of challenges. We would repeat that, on the whole marketing and sales personnel have good personal working relationships, but the demands of their roles and their interdependence creates tensions that, if unaddressed, can lead to conflict. The barriers to collaboration between sales and marketing are very real. They have developed as sales and marketing have grown into distinctive functional areas with their own culture, objectives, and infrastructure. Organizations can go some way to relieve these tensions by senior managers communicating their ...