Should Sales and Marketing Collaborate?

This book explores the antecedents and consequencesof collaboration between sales and marketing. Thestudy was designed to not only identify theantecedents of collaboration between sales andmarketing so that the relationship between these twofunctions can be assessed and improved to the benefitof the organisation, but also to establish thatbusiness performance can be directly influenced byimprovements in this interface. Through the findingsfrom the survey and interviews, five antecedents tocollaboration between sales and marketing wereidentified - management attitudes towardsco-ordination, conflict of interests, communications,market intelligence and organisational learning - anda revised conceptual framework was developed. Theresults suggest that collaborative sales andmarketing functions have benefits for theorganisation in terms of improved businessperformance. This research will be of interest toresearchers into intra-functional relationships,practitioners who are interested in the sales andmarketing interface and students of sales andmarketing strategy.