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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.

This study aims to explore challenges and opportunities in the digitalization of the business-to-business (B2B) customer journey in different buying situations. It also investigates where in the customer journey digital marketing is most efficient.

This research adopts a single case study approach to examine a B2B company that implemented digitalization in its customer journey in different buying situations. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, complemented by internal documents and information from the company’s website and social media, to identify reasons for and against the decision to digitalize the B2B customer journey.

Digitalization can offer firms a cost-effective and value-creating way to interact with customers in a B2B context. The B2B buying situation, however, plays a significant role in decisions on how to implement digitalization. Moreover, in the prepurchase phase, digital marketing is more effective in building awareness; in the purchase phase, personal selling is more effective in addressing customers’ needs.

The use of a single case study cannot produce results directly generalizable to other contexts. However, the findings are applicable to the digitalization of B2B customer journeys in similar industrial contexts.

To successfully implement digitalization in the customer journey, B2B firms should choose digital tools according to different buying situations and phases in the customer journey, segment buyers by their needs rather than individual characteristics and integrate the sales and marketing functions.

This study contradicts prior research that claims that digital marketing can be used in a similar way in both B2B and business-to-consumer contexts. It further shows that the relevant demarcation is not between personal sales and digitalization but between automated digital marketing and individualized personal sales, regardless of medium.

Managers engage in marketing efforts to boost sales and in setting marketing budgets based on current or historical sales. Past studies have overlooked the reciprocal relationship between marketing spending and sales. This study aims to examine the nature of the relationship between sales and marketing expenses in the B2B market.

Five hypotheses on the relationship between sales and marketing expenditures were framed. A total of 30 of India’s dyeing firms provided data on revenues, sales (in units) and marketing expenditures over time. The structural vector auto-regressive model and the vector error correction model were fitted to the data.

The results show that marketing expenses and sales are related bidirectionally in a sequential way. Furthermore, sales drive the long-term equilibrium relationship to a greater extent than marketing expenditures.

The findings of this study should assist managers in predicting sales and marketing budgets simultaneously and devising precise marketing strategies and tactics.

Using econometric models in data-driven research is not a frequent practice in marketing. This study adds value to the body of marketing literature by advancing the theory of the relationship between sales and marketing spending using real-world data and econometric models in the B2B sector.

The paucity of empirical research on the sales‐marketing interface necessitates a detailed exploration of linkages that can forge stronger connection between these two functions. This paper aims to explicate the boundary conditions that may affect the role played by structure, language, and process linkages in forging sales‐marketing connections, and to identify additional linkages that may play an important role in this interface.

A total of 47 sales and marketing professionals across different organizations in diverse industries were interviewed.

The research finds that certain boundary conditions (e.g. organizational hierarchy, time horizon) may influence how structure, language, and process linkages may operate in this interface. It also extends linkage repertoire by identifying two critical linkages: social and philosophical. Its managerial contribution lies in stressing the importance of: vertical and horizontal communication bridges; marketing's flexibility; interpersonal relationships; and the philosophical bond between the two functions, in forging stronger connections.

This is one of the few qualitative empirical investigations of the sales‐marketing interface. It broadens one's understanding of sales‐marketing linkages, adds to linkage repertoire, and extends the interface literature.

Building on prior research in interactions between sales and marketing departments, the purpose of this paper is to investigate departmental alignment among professional hockey teams. By using a single industry sample, the authors are able to identify high and low performers, along with structural antecedents that lead to higher alignment (Rouse and Daellenbach, 1999). Expiring inventory, customer knowledge, and volatile demand enhance the need for alignment and suggest opportunities for innovative mechanisms to share information among departments (Mullin et al., 2007).

Through the usage of Kotler et al.’s (2006) survey instrument, the authors survey NHL Vice Presidents of sales and marketing to assess levels of structural alignment. The authors further explores strategies for alignment through qualitative interviews of select team executives.

The authors find examples of high alignment, achieved through structural elements of proximity, cross-functional tasks, financial incentives, and new technologies. The qualitative interviews provide insight into how organizations attempt to create high levels of alignment.

These results help advance the literature by identifying high performers and going inside organizations for the source of a competitive advantage, thus following Rouse and Dallenbach’s (1999) approach for theory development. The authors also contributes by identifying strategies for practitioners to apply as they attempt to design optimal work structures.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the factors that explain the level of interpersonal conflict between marketing managers and sales managers. The paper aims to establish the overall level of interpersonal conflict in the full sample and in the two sampled countries (UK and Australia).

The study draws on two theoretical frameworks to develop the model, namely structural contingency theory and the interaction approach. More specifically, the conceptual framework uses three groups of variables to explain interpersonal conflict: structural, individual, and communication. Importantly, the study developed and tested nine hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the measures while OLS regression was used in testing the hypotheses. The data were collected from 200 sales managers in the UK and Australia.

Overall, the study finds that there was a surprisingly low level of interpersonal conflict between marketing managers and sales managers and that there were no differences across the two countries. Of the three groups of variables, the two communication variables – frequency and bidirectionality – had the strongest effects on interpersonal conflict. The next strongest effects were from the individual‐level variables – psychological distance and the sales manager's formal education. The findings also reveal that the level of the sales manager's marketing training and the marketing manager's sales experience had no influence on interpersonal conflict. Two of the three structural variables – use of lateral linkages and being part of a corporation – had the hypothesized negative impact on interpersonal conflict.

This is the first study to use a large empirical survey to examine the marketing and sales dyad. Also, it is one of the few studies to test the effects of communication behviours on peer manager conflict.

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.