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  • 2022
  • Chapter
  • Handbook of Business-to-Business Marketing

Coordinating Marketing and Sales in B2B Organizations

By: Frank V. Cespedes
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

This Handbook is targeted at academics and graduate students who want an overview of the academic state of the business-to-business marketing domain and at B2B practitioners who want to be aware of the current state of knowledge in their domains. This chapter examines alignment of Marketing and Sales groups in B2B organizations. Few managers or academics are against teamwork. But terms like “teamwork” and “coordination” are value-laden words with often unexamined assumptions. In organizations, coordination comes at a cost, and different approaches are implicitly choices about the issues a firm must monitor and manage, especially in customer-facing activities. This chapter provides an historical and literature overview of the topic of aligning Marketing and Sales, including a recurring set of prescriptive advice to practitioners and why this advice seems to have limited usefulness. It then reviews common delineations of marketing versus sales activities in B2B companies and the implications: these groups have inherent interdependencies and necessary differences in required focus, time horizons, data flows, and information usage. The chapter concludes with a sample of what some B2B companies have done to improve coordination between these functions, and suggestions about future research.

Keywords

B2B Marketing; Marketing

Citation

Cespedes, Frank V. "Coordinating Marketing and Sales in B2B Organizations." Chap. 7 in Handbook of Business-to-Business Marketing. 2nd ed. Edited by Gary L. Lilien, J. Andrew Petersen, and Stefan Wuyts, 117–137. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.

About The Author

Frank V. Cespedes

Entrepreneurial Management
→More Publications

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More from the Author
  • Belden and Digital Transformation: From Product Sales to Solutions Sales By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Klopfenstein
  • Using Simulations to Upskill Employees By: Frank V. Cespedes, Trond Aas, Alex Hunt and Huw Newton-Hill
  • Aphro Beverages By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amram Migdal
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