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The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the differences in organizations that choose to have a sales executive versus a marketing executive on the leadership team.

Our study examined 315 marketing and sales executives across 246 US firms taken from the S & P 1500.

Our findings suggest that the company choice of marketing or sales executive positions is driven by its customer base, branding strategy, investment in product development, and industry. The choice of executive is also associated with its firm valuation and cash flow performance.

Further research might want to examine companies that include both a sales and marketing executive as part of the leadership team and explore industry characteristics and customer base surrounding that decision.

Research has looked at the relationship between the marketing and sales functions but has rarely taken into account the performance of companies that emphasize sales and/or marketing leadership in its executive team. This paper analyzes the differences in organizations that choose among marketing versus sales executives or an executive overseeing the dual sales and marketing function.

In reviewing a spectrum of practice across the 60 member firms of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, those exhibiting an effective and efficient connection between marketing and sales appear to have three “key linkages” in common: linkages in language, linkages in organization, and linkage in systems. This paper seeks to outline these linkages, and explore how they might be strengthened in business‐to‐business firms.

This is a viewpoint paper, developed by the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, after a full day‐and‐a‐half meeting of ISBM member firms discussing marketing and sales linkage, expanded with additional qualitative observations of marketing/sales linkage across a selection of the ISBM membership base of 60 firms.

The study finds that effectiveness of the linkage between marketing and sales requires strong communication. Often one sees marketing and sales professionals talking past one another – they are not aligned on the definition of key terms, concepts, the nature of their practice. Firms which pay attention to training and alignment on language achieve better results. Common definitions of key terms and attention to communications issues are key in developing a more effective linkage between marketing and sales. Organizational approaches which favor “mixing” marketing and sales, joint meetings and contact, joint sales calls, and a reduction of the boundaries between marketing and sales seem to produce more favorable results. Finally, firms that have thought through, mapped, and show artifacts of a “demand generation process” where the role of marketing and sales are clearly defined, and how one feeds the other is charted clearly, appear to get much better results.

A better understanding – and further research – of the dimensionality of the connection between marketing and sales, how marketing/sales linkages work, antecedents and consequences of strong linkages, and other approaches which produce better results are clearly indicated.

The “Three Linkages” approach points to practical and actionable approaches for managers in strengthening the effectiveness of their marketing and sales teams, such as: train the teams together to create agreement and clearer understanding of language; map the demand generation process and work as a team to understand, streamline, and strengthen it better ; pay careful attention to “handoffs”; and avoid siloed structures where marketing and sales only interact occasionally: implement joint selling calls, and organization structures which foster connection.

Although much discussion goes on with regard to marketing and sales effectiveness, the three dimensionalities of language, organization, and process surfaces as an approach to better understanding how the marketing and sales teams may be better aligned to produce stronger business results.

Effective planning and scheduling systems improve performance in every area of a company. Interfunctional communication and understanding must improve planning that involves joint plans, and schedules must be instituted. Sales and marketing are crucial to this process since they are the starting point with their forecasts and customer order demands. Sales and marketing's active participation in planning and scheduling creates a raised performance and a consensus‐based, trusting working relationship with all other functions.

The transition from marketing strategy to selling is seldom smooth. Too often it is left to chance but successful business results depend on effective management of this transition: coherent and consistent policies, and good communications all along the line from marketing executives to field salesmen.

The international marketing practices and foreign sales of US manufacturing firms are examined in order to identify those marketing variables which are most closely tied to international sales. Survey results suggest that few firms advertise internationally, although advertising is an important determinant of foreign sales, even if that advertising in non‐English‐speaking markets is in English and regardless of its level of standardisation. Results suggest further that manufacture abroad is a powerful stimulus to foreign sales, which is not matched by the presence of sales offices abroad.

The purpose of this study is to understand one portion of the sales ecological system. This paper focuses on the mesolevel or intra-organizational system that includes the sales and marketing functions. This paper examines distinct tensions at three levels of the firm’s hierarchy and the mechanisms used to manage the tensions.

The authors use a qualitative data collection. A discovery-oriented process is used to understand the interconnections that exist among marketing-sales dyads at three organizational levels across several firms.

This paper uncovers distinct tensions and defenses exhibited by managers at each hierarchical level and this paper presents mechanisms that can are used to reduce the tensions.

The multi-level perspective demonstrates the value of examining the intra-organizational aspect of the sales ecosystem. This paper uses a qualitative approach to highlight that sales-marketing tensions are unique to each of the hierarchical levels. This paper demonstrates that the tensions are a function of the unique roles each sales and marketing executive has within the organization.

To make the sales and marketing interface more effective, managers need to view tensions across the sales-marketing interface as complementary versus opposing forces. Managers must balance these tensions, rather than fight them and/or select one of the alternatives over the other. This paper suggests that paradoxical thinking may be a valued skillset for managers at each level of the organization.

The study uses a unique qualitative data set that examines the sales-marketing interface across three levels of an organizational hierarchy. Through this approach, this paper delineates specific tensions between marketing and sales within each level of the firm. This paper also describes mechanisms to manage the tensions common within the sales-marketing interface.

The purpose of this paper is to understand marketing–sales–service (M-S-S) interface from the point of how social media marketing (SMM) platforms are prioritized and associated business-to-business (B2B) sales process influence. This study also seeks to understand whether effective triadic alignment is achieved between marketing, sales and service.

This study combines literature review and the analytical hierarchy process model. In total, 30 M-S-S managers of a multinational electronics firm situated in Africa and the Middle East participated in this study. The authors collected data from M-S-S managers during training sessions on marketing, sales, service alignment and SMM role in sales process.

In their drive for customer orientation and improved organizational performance, marketing, sales and service managers view understanding the customer as the most important sales process attribute. Considered second most significant sales process attribute is needs discovery, whereas approaching the customer is ranked the least important. From the ratings of sales process attributes evaluation and rankings of SMM platform alternatives, the results show a significant hierarchical influence of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on sales process. The results also show an enabling influence of SMM activity on M-S-S interface alignment.

This study has a twofold limitation. First, it explored only one major B2B firm in the electronics industry. Second, only the African and Middle East settings are considered in this study. These limitations could be addressed in future research.

This paper provides practical insights into how M-S-S managers may leverage social media to enhance customer orientation and boost organizational performance. The use of SMM can help M-S-S managers of the focal firm to predict purchase behavior of customers more accurately and as a result effectively manage and improve sales performance. In that drive of using SMM-based competitive intelligence to deliver superior customer experience and enhance sales performance, B2B marketing-oriented firms can also leverage the interdependence (information sharing and involvement) in the M-S-S interface during the SMM activity to enhance triadic alignment.

This study contributes to the literature by developing a framework for modeling SMM influence on M-S-S and B2B sales process to deliver superior customer experience and drive business performance.

The term ‘strategy’ is one of the most frequently used terms in business, and its application in marketing is particularly common. Company strategy, market strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy, promotion strategy, distribution strategy, low pricing strategy – it would take a long time to list all of them. Although this term is so commonly in use, its definition is not as straightforward and it can be interpreted in different ways. In comparison with tactical decisions, strategy is much more significant for an organisation as it brings long-lasting consequences. It is implemented by higher level managers on a regular basis, and it is based on external, often subjective information, so decisions – especially at the time they are made – are difficult to evaluate.

Taking into consideration the fact that strategy refers to a long-term rather than a short-term period, strategic decisions serve as the basis for undertaking operational activities. However, marketing refers to the market and the competition. It is possible to claim that marketing strategy is trying to find an answer to the question to which path an organisation should follow in order to achieve its goals and objectives. If, for example, a company has a goal to generate a profit of PLN 1 million by selling 100,000 pieces of a product, the market strategy should answer at least the following two questions:

1. Who will be our target group, for example, who will purchase the 100,000 pieces of the product?

2. Why is it us from whom a potential buyer should purchase the product?

Who will be our target group, for example, who will purchase the 100,000 pieces of the product?

Why is it us from whom a potential buyer should purchase the product?

The target market will be defined if a reply to the first question is provided. The second question identifies the foundations of competitive advantage. These two issues, that is, target market and competitive advantage are the strategic marketing issues. You cannot change your target group unexpectedly while competitive advantage is the basis for changing decisions regarding prices, promotions and sales.

This chapter describes the measures of marketing activities which refer to strategic aspects and testify a company’s market position – the measures of the performance of target groups and competitive advantage. Readers’ attention should be also focused on the indices that are less popular in Poland and, therefore, may be underestimated. It seems that some of them, for example, the index of marketing resources allocation and the marketing risk index, provide a lot of valuable information and, at the same time, make it possible to show the value of marketing investments. Their wider use in the near future is only a matter of time.

The development of a bank sales management system is described. Using a modified management‐by‐objectives planning procedure, sales goals and strategies were formulated. Then the tasks of the line sales organisation, the branch banking system and the staff sales department were identified. As a result the bank now has a framework for its selling efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical analysis of an important early contribution to the history of marketing thought literature – the six-book series titled The Knack of Selling – which was published in 1913 and intended as an early training course for salesmanship.

This research utilized a close, systematic reading of The Knack of Selling series and places it in the professional and intellectual context of the early twentieth century. Books published about marketing are primary source materials for any study of the history of marketing thought. In this case, The Knack series constitutes significant primary source material for a study of early thinking about personal selling.

Echoing A.W. Shaw, Watson offers a more sophisticated interpretation of the “one best way” approach associated with Frederick Taylor. Watson’s advice did not entail the repetition of canned sales talks to each customer. His vision of practice was more complicated. Sales presentations were temporally and locationally relative. They were subject to ongoing evolution. As the marketplace changed, as customer needs and interests shifted, so did organizational and salesperson performances. To keep sales talks relevant to the consumer, personnel were encouraged to undertake rudimentary ethnographic research and interviews. Unusually, there is oscillation in the way power relations between marketer and customer were described. While relational themes are present, so are military metaphors.

This is the first systematic reading of The Knack of Selling that has been produced. It is an important contribution to the literature inasmuch as this book set is not in wide circulation. The material itself was significant as an input into scholarship subsequently hailed as seminal within sales management.