The importance of an effective sales and marketing interface

© 2011 PSE National Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. ISSN 0885-3134 / 2011 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134310306 The importance of an effective sales and marketing interface to improving business performance has been attracting attention from researchers over the past few years, but to our knowledge no one has yet considered the interrelationship of collaboration between sales and marketing with market orientation and business performance. Some earlier research has investigated the interrelationship of market orientation and sales (e.g., Jones, Busch, and Dacin 2003; Piercy, Cravens, and Lane 2009), but they have not yet considered the sales and marketing interface in this context. Interfunctional collaboration has always been an important part of market orientation, but is cooperation between sales and marketing of particular relevance for market orientation? A consistent market orientation is demonstrated both through the organization’s culture and its operations (SantosVijande et al. 2005). According to Narver and Slater, “Market orientation consists of three behavioral components–customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter-functional co-ordination” (1990, p. 21). It is essential for organizations with a market orientation to ensure that the internal functions work together to make the right marketing offer to their customers (Capon 2011). Organizational buy-in is required so that organizations can deliver what the customers need and what marketing and sales promise, but more importantly, marketing must be certain that the sales force supports its plans. The proposition of this paper is that collaboration between sales and marketing is a critical element in creating a secure foundation for interdepartmental coordination. It is furthermore suggested that by supporting a customer and competitor orientation, this kind of collaboration also strengthens market orientation. However, this area is underresearched and underemphasized in academic literature. The precise relationship between market orientation and the sales and marketing interface remains unclear. Slater and Narver (1994) warned that when establishing a market orientation, it is important to ensure this cultural change is embraced and driven by senior management, and not simply a marketing focus that gives marketing activities an unnecessary significance within the organization. An imbalance in the power relationships between functional areas, particularly between marketing and sales, may result in interfunctional conflict (Massey and Dawes 2007). Interfunctional conflict may result in a reduction in teamwork, increasing distrust, and an eventual withdrawal from the relationship (De Dreu and Weingart 2003; Song, Xie, and Dyer 2000). The sales and marketing interface has exhibited elements of interfunctional conflict with evidence in expressions of dissatisfaction with the other group’s performance, poor understanding of each other’s role, and miscommunications (e.g., Dewsnap and Jobber 2000; Kotler, Rackham, and Krishnaswamy 2006; Rouzies et al. 2005). Sales and marketing functions should play a crucial part in the creation of market orientation as they are both customer facing and boundary spanning. Sales and marketing are visible to the customer, and this interface affects the effectiveness of other functions in maintaining a market focus within the organization. It has been argued for many years that market orientation has a positive influence on business performance (e.g., Slater and Narver 2000), and more recently there has been a link established between collaboration between sales and marketing departments and improved business performance (Homburg and Jensen 2007; Le Meunier-FitzHugh and Piercy 2007). However, we propose that there may be a cumulative effect Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh (Ph.D., University of Warwick), Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, UK, k.le-meunier-fitzhugh@uea.ac. uk.