Literature Review Essay
Relationship between ‘Marketing’ and ‘sales’ in B2B organizations

Introduction Within a ‘Business to Business’ organization, relations between sales and marketing are often dysfunctional meaning they do not always operate properly or as they should (Kotler, Rackham & Krishnaswamy, 2006). One of the key goals of a business is to make profits, which is done by making sales, which only happens by providing a product that satisfying the customer’s needs (Futrell, 2013). This requires both sales and marketing. You would expect sales and marketing to be well aligned in a successful organization, however this is far from the case.

This essay will first look at the causes that usually lie behind the concern that sales and marketing do not always act collaboratively to the benefit of the organization but in fact have a dysfunctional relationship exists between marketing and sales divisions. It will look into the ways in which this problem can negatively impact on an organization's ability to serve its customers and compete effectively. Finally potential solutions will be identified and discussed in relation to improving the synergy and integration between sales and marketing, which will ultimately allow organizations serve their customers and compete most effectively in this ever changing world. What causes Sales and Marketing relationship to be dysfunctional? Within a business to business organization, sales and marketing do not always act collaboratively to the benefit of the organization (Rouziès, Anderson, Kohli, Michaels, Weitz & Zoltners, 2005).This lack of collaboration and subsequent deficiency of communication originates from what (Kotler et al., 2006) has described as ‘economic conflict’ and ‘cultural conflict’. Others have described this as physical and philosophical differences, however these are essentially the same things (Lorge,