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Marketing and sales: Optimization of a neglected relationship

Article in Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing · October 2006

DOI: 10.1108/08858620610690100

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 Marketing and sales: optimization of
a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens
LUC and University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium and Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and
Wesley J. Johnston
Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of good coordination between marketing and sales. It aims to examine the research
conducted to date, the area of marketing and sales integration and provide guidance to help integrate these functional areas better in industrial
marketing firms. The paper seeks to develop a research agenda to continue this research.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 21 interviews were collected through the use of qualitative research techniques and intensive
interviews. The interactions between marketing and sales were modeled for during the marketing management process and the sales management
process.
Research limitations/implications – More extensive sample surveys need to be conducted. Exploratory findings should be tested and possible
situational differences identified.
Practical implications – Several required actions were identified for management. These fall into three categories: organizational design;
communication; and human resources management. The primary suggestions are to make sure: product management functions effectively as a
coordination mechanism; there is central coordination; the organizational structure is customer-centric; communication is timely and of high quality;
and everyone in sales and marketing has an appreciation of the other role.
Originality/value – The research provides one of the earliest efforts to examine this important area from an empirical perspective and provide
guidance to marketing and sales managers.

Keywords Marketing, Sales, Sales management, Integration

Paper type Research paper

An executive summary for managers and executive
readers can be found at the end of this issue.
Introduction
In literature on industrial marketing attention has always been
put on the interdisciplinary character of marketing. Hutt and
Speh (1992, pp. 229-37) discussed the role of the marketer as
a strategic coordinator. Webster (1992, p. 14) emphasized the
high degree of “functional interdependence” between
marketing and other functions within industrial companies.
Srivastava et al. (1999) propose three core business processes
that should be managed: product development, supply chain
and customer relationship. Marketplace shifts such as a move
to solution customization and relation-based intimacy impact
on how these processes must be governed. They stress that
marketers’ success will not only depend on their functional
excellence, but also will require cross-functional process
competence to ensure the implementation of marketing ideas.
Along the same lines, Moorman and Rust (1999) view
marketing as the function that manages connections between
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0885-8624.htm
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
21/6 (2006) 338– 345
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0885-8624]
[DOI 10.1108/08858620610690100]
the organization and the customer (i.e. the customer-product,
customer-service delivery and customer-financial
accountability). Descriptive organizational research is
welcomed to scrutinize the “integrative and specialized role
of marketing in organizations” (Moorman and Rust, 1999,
p. 195). A number of authors developed a conceptual
framework to study the so called interfaces (Wind, 1981;
Ruekert and Walker, 1987; Lim and Reid, 1992). Others
carried out empirical research on specific interfaces, especially
on the interfaces marketing-R&D, marketing-finance and
marketing-production.
In this contribution, the interfunctional relation between
marketing and sales is studied, an interface which has barely
been given attention by researchers up to now. Vieira (1992)
introduced out of everyday practice some “hot topics” on the
relation marketing-sales. Cespedes (1994) studied this
interface more systematically and scientifically. He also has
done an empirical study on this phenomenon in consumer
firms (Cespedes, 1993). Zoltners (2004) developed a
conceptual model to integrate sales and marketing tasks and
examine the inputs from each function into the other. Some
speculation has begun regarding why sales and marketing may
be difficult to integrate (Rouzies et al., 2005).
Some tendencies within industrial marketing make it more
and more important to integrate both functions in the best
possible way or at least “smoothen” the cooperation between
– often antagonistic – functions. After focusing on these
The authors thank P. Verhulst for conducting the interviews.

338
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
tendencies, an overview of the past research and the present
study will be given. Next, in two sections we will make an
inventory of the mutual interactions by both departments
during the marketing and sales management process. The
consequences of the interactions will be explained briefly and
illustrated by practical experience. Afterwards, a number of
factors that may hamper the integration will be discussed. In
the last part, a number of management guidelines will be
summed up and evaluated, and a research agenda will be
formulated. This article represents one of the earliest efforts
to qualitatively examine this important issue in a business-to-
business setting and provide guidance to help better integrate
sales and marketing.
The importance of integrating marketing and
sales
The actual business sales context is increasingly complex
(Boles et al., 1999, 1997) and urges industrial companies to
integrate marketing and sales better. Both the marketing and
sales literature stress the need for functional interfaces. Day
and Montgomery (1999) indicated five themes salient to
markets and emerging marketing:
1 the connected knowledge economy;
2 globalizing, converging and consolidating industries;
3 fragmenting and frictionless markets;
4 demanding customers; and
5 adaptive organizations.
In such an environment, one of the challenges for marketing is
to take a leadership role in the successful management of
interfunctional interfaces, they put forward.
Honeycutt (2002) pinpoints fast-paced and interrelated
global forces impacting on sales managers such as
globalization, technological innovations (internet, customer
relationship management (CRM)), demographic trends and a
trend towards relationship marketing. Ingram et al. (2002)
highlight the move to strategic issues most sales organizations
face. CRM has become a core strategic business capability.
Further they argue that organizations should clearly define the
organizational role of the sales function in translating market
orientation and customer centricity into market performance.
Among the many other issues they address, we mention their
request for rethinking traditional organizational structure and
the establishment of “integrator roles” (account managers,
CRM process managers, etc.) and “customer-focused teams”,
integrating all relevant business functions around a customer
management strategy.
As mentioned in these contributions, several contextual
issues “force” marketing and sales to get nicer and closer to
each other as well as to other functions. Specifically focusing
on marketing vs sales, a first indication of closer cooperation
is the change in the product. Apart from hardware, suppliers
nowadays offer a high level service and know-how as well
(integral solutions).
Within a larger product concept the salesperson plays an
important role as he or she is the one who informs the client
and is, in most cases, responsible for the installation, training
of the users, etc. The salesperson needs to have a good
knowledge of the different applications. Therefore the support
by product and application managers is essential.
A second important tendency is the evolution towards
relationship marketing and CRM, caused by a change in
industrial purchasing behavior (Kalwani and Narayandas,
1995) and new possibilities with information and
communication technology. For strategic purchases there is
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Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
a clear evolution from a fighting attitude towards more
cooperative behavior by the industrial buyers (Matthyssens
and Van Den Bulte, 1994). By means of co-makership and
early supplier involvement supplier and client create a close
partnership. Major industrial buyers thus reduce their
number of suppliers. Within this context, companies sell
core competence rather than physical standard products. In
95 percent of the sales situations problem solving is tailor-
made taking into account the specific applications by the
client. The product manager and salesperson/ account
manager are both part of innovation and consultative selling
teams.
A third stimulus for further integration is the increasing
diversity in industrial applications. Industrial markets get
fragmented thus creating micro markets. This evolution
confirms the need for intensive cooperation, between sales
and marketing. Attentive sales representatives inform
marketers of market developments and opportunities. The
salesperson, on the other hand, depends on the correct
positioning and targeting of the large product range by the
product manager and must be backed by tailored marketing
actions and offerings.
Another factor is the ever growing time pressure industrial
companies are facing. Time pressure on market introductions
and order processing is caused by the lifetime of a product
which is getting shorter and by “turbo marketing”.
Salespeople and marketers do need to switch faster from
product plan to commercialization. Flexibility and fast-
integrated internal and external communication are
prerequisites for both parties.
Salesforce automation is considered to contribute to higher
sales performance. Moreover, it can help assure valuable
information is not lost and it might enhance coordination
(Engle and Barnes, 2000).
The increased importance of an optimal fine-tuning
between marketing and sales contrasts sharply with the little
attention it gets in literature. For instance, Lim and Reid
(1992) and Wind (1981) do not mention the sales-marketing
interface while discussing “vital” linkages. The importance of
the relation, however, has been stressed through the years,
especially in publications on product (brand) management
with a consumer marketing dominance.
Most business-to-business companies do have product
managers to develop their marketing strategy from a market
perspective and to coordinate its implementation for a specific
product (group). In the execution of these tasks, they are
confronted with a number of interdepartmental conflicts.
Luck (1996) mentioned explicitly the relation with the
salesforce as a difficult, but essential interface for the product
manager. Others (Venkatesh and Willemon, 1976; Lyonski,
1985) stress the importance of interpersonal diplomacy,
perseverance, teamwork, interpersonal skills, etc. to optimize
further the relationship between product management and
the large number of internal and external parties (including as
well the sales department). It is evident that marketing as well
as product managers who by means of marketing plans try to
reach “a fine-tuning with the activities of other functional
areas” spend almost half of their time on different internal
contacts.
Description of the study
In this qualitative research 17 companies contributed. These
companies were selected out of a list of the 30,000 largest
companies in Belgium. An additional condition to be involved
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
in the study was the presence of a separate sales and
marketing department. In many of the interviewed companies
the marketing tasks were attributed to the product managers.
They were mostly technically skilled due to the high technical
level of the sectors that were focused in the study.
The selected companies belong to the top three of their
sector and their activities are situated within the computer
and telecommunications industry, mechanical engineering
and industrial supplies. A total of 21 managers was
interviewed of which 12 marketing managers and nine sales
managers. It was always tried to interview both functions
which, however, was not always possible. The companies were
contacted by telephone. The interviews took place in the
company itself with the help of a topic list. The following
topics were discussed:
.
importance of the interaction;
.
interaction areas during respectively the marketing
management and sales management process (stepwise
structure provided to interviewee);
.
tensions; and
.
integration factors.
Afterwards, the interviews were split up into two groups
(marketing and sales) and subjected to a content analysis per
interaction area. The most frequent and outspoken findings
are described hereafter. Because of the small sample size we
want to stress the exploratory nature of our study. Results
should be taken as indicative and by no means normative. For
this reason too no frequency tables and statistical tests will be
given. This should not be considered a drawback, however, as
this field is still in its “context of discovery” (Hunt, 2002,
pp. 22-9).
For each phase of the marketing and sales management
process the consequences of the listed interactions between
both groups will be evaluated using the conceptual model of
Ruekert and Walker (1987). This model integrated the
different perspectives in the analysis of interfaces.
Fundamental in the approach of these scholars are the
dependency relations that are the basis of information and
workflow between two departments. Substantial interactions
lead to higher degrees of formalization. Imbalance in relations
will lead to conflicts. For each interaction area their
propositions will be compared to the results of our own
explorative study.
Interaction areas during the marketing
management process
Traditionally within the industrial marketing management
process, about four major phases can be distinguished i.e.
analysis, planning, implementation and control (see Figure 1,
left column). The table further describes how intense and in
which direction “resources and information stream” flows
(arrows) and which are the perceived (by the participating
managers) tasks of both divisions concerning these streams.
During the analysis stage the marketers need a lot of
information. A large part of it is generated and analyzed by
the marketing support or it is bought outside. For some
specific information, however, marketing depends on the sales
department, e.g. for information on the purchase behavior of
specific buyers, actions by competitors, etc.
The sales department in this way is able to influence, to a
certain extent, marketing decisions. The amount of
information coming from sales will be quite large which
means that this kind of communication in most companies is
strongly formalized. Due to the almost unilateral dependence
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Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
of the marketing department from sales discussions will rise
frequently. Literature suggests that with regard to market
research salespeople often do their job in a careless and
subjective way.
Our own study confirms that during the analysis phase
marketing is strongly dependent from the sales department as
to the collection of the needed market data (the arrows in the
figure are a good illustration of this). It was also noted that in
some cases the wanted data did not meet the expectations of
marketing. The cooperation and communication can be
improved in most cases. Marketing should thus indicate what
information it needs from sales and what is done with the data
it gets. Sales should transmit the wanted data on time,
accurately and objectively. In exchange they expect useful
market data, forecasts, etc. The complaints uttered within this
context were similar to those in other studies (Vieira, 1992).
Positive, however, is that the managers who were interviewed
expressed their wish for a better cooperation during the
market analysis stage.
The marketing department draws up a marketing plan by
which sales feels strongly dependent from its content resulting
in a large and quite strongly formalized communication
stream between the two departments. Moreover, it can be
supposed that low involvement by sales may be a source of
frustration and dissatisfaction (Venkatesh and Willemon,
1976). The arrows in Figure 1 indicate the existence of an
imbalance between the means and information stream during
this phase.
From our study it appears that there is a minor input from
sales as for the definition of objectives and the selection of the
positioning. Most of the times, the sales department is rather
late “informed” and is strongly dependent from the decisions
by marketing. It is only for promotion actions within
distribution, for the preparation of exhibitions, the
composition of catalogues and brochures that sales is really
asked for advice.
All interviewed managers report little interaction during
this phase although they would like to cooperate more
intensively during the development of the product, price and
communication policy. They are in favor of a further
formalization of the interaction during this phase as to avoid
as much as possible problems and discussions. Especially the
sales department is convinced that the relation should be
strongly improved. The imposed pricing structure and the
marketing objectives cause a lot of frustration, they say.
Despite a good planning process, problems may still arise
during the implementation. This may be contributed to the
fact that the content of the plans is interpreted differently.
Another reason may be that the plans were not fully adapted
to the market and means of the unit concerned (Bonoma,
1984). Both parties are strongly dependent from one another
(see arrows in Figure 1) to stay on the right track during
implementation.
This has been confirmed in our study. In case of conflicts
the management of both departments seem to take up the role
of coordinator to prevent disturbance by ordinary problems of
the interface between product management and sales. The
majority of the interviewees say that the cooperation during
implementation is satisfactory.
During control an extensive exchange of information is
necessary. The sales managers and the regional sales
managers provide information that enables the judging of
either the success or failure of a marketing program.
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
Figure 1 1Interaction during the marketing management process
Conflicts often arise when defining the possible causes of
failure cases. It is therefore not surprising that formalized
evaluation systems are being used more and more.
From our study it appears that mutual dependence as it was
suggested above was not strongly experienced by the
managers who were interviewed. It remains, however,
advisable to promote the integration in this field above all
during the first two stages and to formalize the exchange of
information.
Interaction areas during the sales management
process
The sales management process was split up in about six
phases i.e. recruitment and selection, training and
development, management and motivation, remuneration,
allocation and finally evaluation and control (see Figure 2).
Each phase in the sales management process is discussed
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Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
briefly and it will be checked whether the means and
information stream between marketing and sales is well-
balanced (see arrows in Figure 2).
As in general salespeople are not recruited frequently one
could expect that the input by marketing is not highly
formalized during this stage.
This was confirmed in the study. Marketing has no input in
most companies involved in the study. Even more: both
parties do not wish any further integration in this area. The
above-mentioned tendencies in industrial marketing,
however, justify a stronger involvement of the marketing
staff, for example in the setting of some selection criteria (e.g.
selling integral solutions in a one to one customer relation
often requires application knowledge and insight into the total
cost of ownership).
In most cases, the training process is coordinated by the
sales manager. In order to stay as close as possible to reality,
the sales department will rely on the marketing department to
clarify the marketing strategy and the sales expectations. So
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
Figure 2 Interaction during the sales management process
there is a certain dependence from the input by marketing.
Well-informed salespeople are also said to be more strongly
committed (Siguaw et al., 1994). Our study stated that the
described interactions frequently occur. The major input by
marketing is the provision of market information and the
clarification of the strategy and the marketing mix options.
Marketing says that in this area no further integration is
required (they do not want to spend time on it). Sales
managers, however, would especially like to increase the
product managers’ involvement during training and
development.
Management, motivation and remuneration is mainly a task
of the sales management even though marketing can have a
demotivating influence by putting unrealistic strategic
objectives, by insufficient support and by lack of confidence.
Marketers complain about the low motivation of salespeople
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Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
as far as tasks are concerned which do not directly result in a
higher turnover. The sales managers do think that marketing
should motivate by, for example, making clear that some
specific market information is really essential and will be used
effectively.
From our study it appears that no-nonsense support by the
product manager is required. It also indicates that marketers
are not always conscious of the role they can play in the
motivation of salespeople. They think that this is the sales
manager’s task only. The interaction between marketing and
sales in this area is strictly limited or does not even exist and
most marketing and sales managers that we interviewed prefer
to keep it this way.
Allocation of salespeople and means is defined by the
priorities within the sales strategy. A wrong allocation may
have major consequences for the results and performance of
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
the marketing department. As a consequence it can be
presumed that marketers would like to influence allocation.
After all, each product manager depends on the goodwill of
the representatives.
The interviewees are convinced that a better coordination
of the priorities in the allocation process is necessary to avoid
tensions in this field.
For evaluation and control qualitative as well as quantitative
criteria are the basis for a thorough evaluation of the
salespeople. For objective data, the sales manager is strongly
dependent on the marketing department.
During the interviews, however, it became clear that the
sales manager thinks that he needs only little information
from marketing in this matter. Managers from both
departments do experience little problems here.
Barriers which hamper further integration
between marketing and sales
Typically for people from various departments is their
different skills and means, their orientation towards other
objectives and their different evaluation processes. This often
gives them a “local rationality” and makes them lose a part of
their objectivity and empathy vis-à-vis other departments. In
the marketing-sales relation this results in a number of
prejudices. The stereotypes as described in Vieira are still
somewhat alive. Our research indicates that marketers blame
their sales colleagues to handle information carelessly and to
cherish too high expectations towards product policy. They
accuse them to be too strongly short-term oriented and to act
expediently, even selfishly.
Salespeople for their part blame the marketers to be
“unrealistic dreamers” who develop fantastic however not
useful plans. They further experience a lack of respect and
support from marketing.
In most of our interviews a number of these stereotypes
were uttered spontaneously. Some managers mentioned that a
number of the hereafter listed prejudices keep up the gap
between both departments notwithstanding the realization
that synergy must be reached. As an example a marketing
manager from a computer company told us that on a certain
moment almost no information was transmitted from sales to
marketing. From later conversations it appeared that
representatives thought that their remarks were not taken
into account anyway. Therefore, they did not find it useful to
report on their contacts with the client.
As already described above, the marketing and sales
planning process is often considered a burden. The
“coordination and integration” is then supposed to happen
afterwards, but nobody takes ownership of that process.
From our interviews it appeared that the various and
sometimes opposite priorities during allocation of the
resources create tension.
A number of product managers complained that
salespeople tend to postpone the launching of a new
product as much as possible. According to a sales manager
“the clients would stop buying the existing product generation
as soon as they hear about the new technology”. Moreover,
salespeople tend to promote “best selling” old products which
are a result of their orientation towards return. Product
managers, however, tend to announce new products as soon
as possible in order to arouse interest in the product.
Another barrier between marketing and sales may be the
poor coordination between both organization structures. This
means that the structure of both departments may have
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Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
become so complex that the employees do not see clearly
anymore in the responsibilities and roles. According to an
interviewee a certain activity is then executed too late or not
at all. Moreover, some interviewees reported that a task is
sometimes being done twice (e.g. the handling of a
complaint).
A next burden is the poor and insufficient communication
between both departments during the planning as well as
during the implementation phase. The above mentioned
unilateral dependence relations do play an important role
here. Marketing and sales also differ in their information
management. According to what has been published on the
subject, the different information systems may create a high
burden between both departments and cause a
transformation problem (Dawes and Patterson, 1988).
Within the companies involved in our study,
communication is running rather smoothly although
improvement is possible in the field of timing and content
of the communication. As an example: sales would like to be
informed more quickly on the exhibition activities which
marketing would like to organize.
The support of the interface by the top management is
another frequently factor mentioned. If, on the higher
management levels no importance is given to the relation
between marketing and sales, few spontaneous initiatives will
be taken on the lower levels to improve the interface as people
are then convinced that the management has set other
priorities.
Finally, the interviewees confirm what appears from
literature i.e. that the evaluation and rewarding systems
within the company are not adapted in order to create a
positive cooperation between marketing and sales.
Managerial implications
In this section suggestions are made on how to stimulate the
interface between both sales and marketing (see also Table I).
We distinguish three main directions i.e. organizational
factors, communication factors and human resources
management (HRM).
Organizational factors
As stated above, product management should function as the
coordination mechanism between marketing and sales. It
seems that the product management as a structure to promote
the interface does not work adequately in some industrial
companies, which is in line with prior research.
According to the sales manager of a large computer
company product managers should be more directly involved
in client-oriented activities. This may prevent product
managers from acting and deciding too much from their
“ivory tower”. According to that sales manager it is necessary,
when bringing product management closer to the market, to
keep the market contacts of the product manager through the
sales department.
Further on we plead for a central coordination between the
marketing and sales activities by creating the function of a
sales and marketing manager to whom both departments
should report. The visions, objectives and activities of the
departments could then be better coordinated as was
mentioned by some companies that participated.
The third organizational factor addressing coordination
successfully implemented by two companies is the creation of
multifunctional teams for specific markets, products or
problems. These teams have a fixed formal composition and
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
Table I Recommendations for better integration of sales and marketing
1. Make sure product management functions effectively as a
coordination mechanism between marketing and sales
2. Make sure there is central coordination between marketing and
sales
3. Make sure the organizational structure is customer-centric
4. Make sure communication is timely and of high quality at all times
5. Make sure everyone in sales and marketing has an appreciation of
the others’ roles and contribution
meet regularly in order to coordinate their priorities in time.
This approach has also been recommended by Möller and
Rajala (1999) have argued for the dismantling of traditional
marketing departments and for the development of “internal
marketing excellence centers”, having the responsibility for
interfunctional coordination and the integration of the
diversified marketing units (i.e. product management, field
sales and customer service).
From the answers by the interviewees it appears that
cooperation within these cross-functional teams is especially
wanted during the planning and implementation of the
different marketing and sales activities (e.g. the introduction
of a new product). Experiences in the field are promising.
Communication factors
The communication and information system is the
determining infrastructure for the marketing interfaces.
During the interviews, effective communication was
indicated as the most important factor to solve and prevent
problems between both departments. All managers who were
interviewed stated that both formal and informal
communication are necessary in order to bring the
departments closer together.
In this study most companies did not report any major
communication problems. A lot of managers, however, did
mention that improvement was possible concerning timing
and quality of the communication, especially by means of
management information systems. In a number of large
companies enthusiasm was high for the presence of an
intranet. This has increased the speed of communication to a
great extent.
HRM
Job rotation is essential in diminishing the number of
sometimes persistent prejudices. By taking up temporarily
one or more functions in another department, the involved
employee will gain more insight in the range of tasks which are
normally done by a colleague and will see clearer in his/her
working environment. Job rotation will finally decrease the
number of problems and will lead to a growing number of
competences/skills.
Some marketing managers of companies in the highly
technical mechanical engineering sector found it useful that
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Volume 21 · Number 6 · 2006 · 338 –345
Product managers need to be directly involved in client-oriented activities
Get product managers out of the ivory tower and on to the street
Keep the market contacts of the product managers in the sales department
Create the position of sales and marketing manager responsible for both
departments
Coordinate visions, objectives and activities between both departments
Create multifunctional teams for specific markets and individual customers if
they are large enough
Hold regular meetings to coordinate all team members
Utilize technology to support communication including an intranet
Use management information systems, including sales force automation and
CRM customer databases
Use job rotation from sales to marketing to sales
Use incentives to support cooperation
Conduct joint training
Reward successful examples when they occur
representatives could work temporarily in a product manager
function, as this would enlarge their technical knowledge
extensively. However, one ex product manager, which now
was sales manager told us he was amazed by the speed by
which he adopted the local rationality of his new (sales)
function thereby behaving himself vis-à-vis product managers
in a way which he disliked before (when he himself was
product manager).
Joint training and development programs also stimulate the
interface. A common jargon and thinking pattern is provided
and the residential atmosphere of seminars leads to open
discussions under professional guidance.
Finally, the top management and the managers from both
departments should create an optimal organizational climate
between the departments. Here, the culture – a set of values
and norms valid in the organization – plays a determining
role.
Apart from this, a number of interviewees mentioned some
elements which could contribute to the promotion of the
interface but which can hardly be realized due to budget
reasons i.e. to bring closer together, physically, marketing and
salespeople in the same building and the hiring of extra
personnel (especially in the marketing department).
Conclusion
Cooperation between marketing and sales could be strongly
improved in different areas of the marketing and sales
management process. In the course of our study it became
clear that both sales and marketing do not always recognize
the importance of cooperation in certain areas. There are
various reasons why both departments do not integrate as
they should. The most important barriers are the stereotypes,
the unilateral dependence relations, the different “hierarchy of
priorities” and a number of organization and communication
factors. We finally formulated three aspects which could form
the fundamentals for the optimization of the interface
marketing-sales i.e. the organization, the communication
and human resources management. We think it absolutely
necessary that managers pay attention to this problem. Within
the current industrial context an optimal coordination is
essential. For university graduates this subject offers
possibilities for further study with more extensive sample
 Marketing and sales: optimization of a neglected relationship
Paul Matthyssens and Wesley J. Johnston
surveys. Exploratory findings could thus be tested and
possible situational differences would emerge.
References
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About the authors
Paul Matthyssens is Professor of Marketing Strategy at the
LUC and at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and
Professor of Industrial Marketing at the Erasmus University
of Rotterdam. Paul Matthyssens is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: paul.matthyssens@ua.ac.be
Wesley J. Johnston is Professor of Marketing and Health
Administration in the Robinson College of Business at the
Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.