Marketing and Sales: Conflict and Cooperation in Consumer Product Organizations

Buyers never want to feel pushed, manipulated, or rushed. Sales professionalism is another factor into having a buyer and seller trust based relationship. This method is a way to approach customers in a trusting and non-manipulating tactic to satisfy the long-term needs of both the customer and the selling firm. Salespeople play a critical role on the sales floor. Almost all consumers in the society who are early adopters of an innovation often rely on salespeople as a primary source of information. Given the increasing importance of building a trust bond and developing a long-term relationship is an imperative that salespeople are truthful with the customers. It is important for salespeople to

Wells Fargo is one of the leading companies for sales. As an employee, I’m honored to be asked by the CEO, to recommend actions to promote sales involvement. In the outline, I list six critical topics on what I recommend how Wells Fargo should promote sales involvement. Following the outline, is an explanation of three of the most critical topics that are listed in the outline. Lastly, a propose of a potential course of implementation is stated.

There are misconceptions about the role sales and marketing teams play as it relates to consumers. Quora.com provides validity of differences by outlining the difference. For example, “marketing tries to understand the customer as a generic group/ segment or persona in order to create generic value propositions and 'mass' awareness” (citation 1). Marketing is known to have long-term goals and their workflow follows that timeline. Marketers lean toward the creative and detailed oriented traits where collaboration among colleagues is encouraged.

Sales and marketing is a love hate relationship within a company. They both are vital to the selling process, but their jobs, while having the same objectives, are extremely different and often causes tension within a company. Marketing is based on research and development for a product in order to focus where it is to be placed in the market, how it is priced and promoted, while it is Sales duty to take the findings from the research and use them to land clients and customers who will by the product, and then work with them to make the product client focused and retain a relationship. The problem arises when Sales doesn’t agree with the Marketer’s findings and Marketers are irritated about Sales lack of execution on a

Too often, I have encountered business managers hiring Salespeople and classifying them as Business Developers. The same holds true when managers call their Sales people Marketing Professionals. Main reasons behind this misclassification are twofold: First, many people DO NOT understand what the differences are between sales, marketing, and business development. Second, organizations do not accurately recognize which of these functional areas need help to drive revenue and how they compliment each other. These misunderstandings of disciplines cause unrealistic expectations and failure to achieve goals.

These transformative changes to the selling environment are ultimately forcing the salesperson to reengineer and rethink how they approach their business accounts. Failure in adapting to these changes can result in many adverse situations but ultimately revolves around ineffective team selling.

Incredibly, despite this fallout, many salespeople continue to train in that decades-old style of sales. While the names of some of the tactics and techniques have changed, the philosophy at the heart of the training is essentially the same: do whatever it takes to outmaneuver the customer into saying yes, and close the sale. But from my own thirty years of sales experience, that approach no longer cuts it. More competitive products, diverse shopping outlets, and sophisticated customer preferences have radically changed the game. The challenge of selling has become so different from the way it used to be that today’s salespeople need a different way to sell.

In chapter eight, Miller discusses the sales manager’s responsibilities of assigning salespeople territories, designing effective “compensation” packages, and establishing incentivized reward systems (Miller 2001, 189-212). Miller explains how the firm’s sales force can be deployed using the following three pathways: 1) “Geographic,” 2) “Account,” and 3) “Product assignments” (Miller 2001, 189-212). Miller advises that a hybrid combination of all three is the most effective for enhancing market share and sales acquisition. Miller further elaborates on the importance of using “The ProActive Sales Matrix” for maximizing salespeople’s schedule and opportunity for selling (Miller 2001, 189-212). Miller suggests

Selling ASAP: Art, Science, Agility, Performance begins with the concept of understanding how buyers buy. In order to do this, the salesperson must first uncover the needs and wants of the prospect. With this information, the salesperson will be able to alter his or her communication style to fit the customer’s preferences. According to the book, motivation has two components:

of the key issues result from John’s inability to comprehend the difference between sales representative and a sales manager. He was overly enthusiastic about his position and disregarded Phil Jackson’s tips on how to be successful as a sales manager. Sales managers must be multi-taskers who plan, organize and lead the functions of all customer contact and ensures that these methods of contact maximize the profit and sales goals of the company which hires them. A salesperson is responsible only for his/her own territory – a sales manager is responsible for the entire sales force and their productivity and revenue that

A sales person who can deliver reliable results is rarely in danger of having their position outsourced or eliminated. Sales people who can go above and beyond are in an even better situation. Because sales are the cornerstone of a business 's success, the sales department rarely faces the same budget cuts in adverse economic conditions as other departments do. What 's more, the skills and abilities that sales people develop in their day to day work and in sales training are translatable to other sales positions, including positions that offer advancement. When opportunities arise, a sales person is well equipped to take the next step in his or her career.

1. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 3 2. Analysis of current issues with the sales process............................................................ 4 2.1 Key interfaces of the sales process ........................................................................... 4 2.2 Performance objectives............................................................................................. 8 2.2.1 Operational resource

(2008), that describes not only sales and marketing interfaces but also the time variations throughout companies and sectors. Homburg et al. (2008) described five conceptual domains of marketing and sales configurations for better collaboration: information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientation, and knowledge. By the critical assessment of all these 5 dimensions, managers can assess the level of cooperation between two departments and take an appropriate managerial action to correct the lacking intensity of the interplay (Homburg, Jensen, & Krohmer,

However, as time changes and consumer’s preferences shifts overtime, there is a need to change the structure to improve the company’s productivity and maximize the potential of the salespeople. With their vast knowledge of the products, they could now focus on understanding the different geographical locations they want to focus on, and then sell according to the needs and wants based on their research.

Business today must have some sort of marketing in their corporate strategy because it is a very vital part of the corporate plan. They say the Marketing is a business philosophy, and for the business to survive the customers wants and needs must be met, and that is not just a job for the marketing department. Granted the role of Marketing is a separate entity from the rest of the jobs within the company however Drucker (2013) states that “This just cannot be left solely to the marketing department”. (Drucker, 2013)