Sales and marketing are two primary business functions that focus on creating satisfied customers. Due to their complementary orientations and objectives, these two functions are ideally positioned for a fruitful, synergetic collaboration. UnfortuÂnately, the practical reality in many companies is far removed from this utopia. Sales and marketing personnel fail to communicate effectively, resulting in misunderstandings, frustration, and sometimes sabotage. Instead of supporting each other in creating superior value for customers, they often fight tiresome internal battles that are a drain on profits, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Improving Sales and Marketing Collaboration offers the first comprehensive perspective on the functioning of sales-marketing interfaces in business to business (B2B) companies. We explore their complementary roles in creating superior value for customers, problems that occur, the underlying causes of these problems, and potential solutions. These solutions are accompanied by a series of tools that managers can use to diagnose their sales-marketing interface and develop appropriate approaches to improve this relationship. Additionally, the book discusses a number of challenges that companies encounter and the impacts on their sales-marketing interfaces. The discussions and tools presented in this book provide managers with a deep underÂstanding of this critical interface, allowing them to apply these insights to improve their sales-marketing interface, which helps them create superior value for customers.

This volume includes the full proceedings from the 2011 World Marketing Congress held in Reims, France with the theme The Customer is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientations in a Dynamic Business World. The focus of the conference and the enclosed papers is on marketing thought and practices throughout the world. This volume resents papers on various topics including marketing management, marketing strategy, and consumer behavior. Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. Volumes deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complimenting the Academy’s flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review. Volumes are edited by leading scholars and practitioners across a wide range of subject areas in marketing science.​

Sales enablement is a proven system for increasing revenue and productivity by creating integrated content, training and coaching for the sales function. Written from a marketer's perspective, Effective Sales Enablement goes beyond sales training and development. Pam Didner presents fresh thinking and creative approaches to improve sales enablement strategies, processes and programmes. Using case studies and examples from well-known brands such as Cisco, Oracle and Google, she provides a blueprint for any organization wanting to create a sales enablement function which will, in turn, accelerate revenue growth. Effective Sales Enablement shows you how to: - Understand trends that impact sales professionals and how to take advantage of them - Become a better marketer with creative ideas on how to support sales - Integrate sales elements into select marketing programmes - and vice versa - Assemble a first-class sales enablement team - Leverage technology to better integrate sales and marketing

A playbook that empowers sales managers to think like CEOs and act like entrepreneurs At Salesforce.com, Elay Cohen created and executed the sales productivity programs that accelerated the company’s growth to a $3 billion–plus enterprise. The innovation delivered over these years by Elay and his team resulted in unprecedented sales productivity excellence. Based on that experience, Elay embarked on a journey to help every company in the world grow like Salesforce.com. After working with many organizations and further reflecting on his time at Salesforce.com, it became apparent that one key player was best positioned to accelerate growth in organizations: the first-line sales manager. Empowering sales managers to own and execute their own sales programs, as entrepreneurs would, became the focus of this book and his technology company. First-line sales managers are the backbone of every sales organization. They make it happen. They’re where the rubber meets the road in pipeline generation, revenue growth, and customer success. These sales managers serve as the voice of salespeople to organizations, and as the organizational voice back to salespeople. In this accessible guide, Cohen shares how sales managers can build an inspired, engaged team, equipping them with the tools they need to drive up sales productivity and grow the business. He reveals, among many other lessons, how you can nurture a winning sales culture; build world-class training programs that encourage salespeople to learn from each other; and execute sales processes, playbooks, and deals in a way that gives your salespeople the winning edge.

Buyer behavior has changed the marketplace, and sellers must adapt to survive The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the definitive guide to the new reality of sales. The roles of buyers, sellers, and technology have changed, and collaboration is now the key to success on all sides. The Collaborative Sale guides sales professionals toward alignment with buyers, by helping them overcome their problems and challenges, and creating value. From building a robust opportunity pipeline and predicting future revenues to mastering the nuances of buyer conversations, the book contains the information sales professionals need to remain relevant in today's sales environment. Buyers have become more informed and more empowered. As a result, most sellers now enter the buying process at a much later stage than the traditional norm. The rise of information access has given buyers more control over their purchases than ever before, and sellers must adapt to survive. The Collaborative Sale provides a roadmap for adapting through sales collaboration, detailing the foundations, personae, and reality of the new marketplace. The book provides insight into the new buyer thought processes, the new sales personae required for dealing with the new buyers, and how to establish and implement a dynamic sales process. Topics include: Selling in times of economic uncertainty, broad information access, and new buyer behavior Why collaboration is so important to the new buyers The emergence of new sales personae – Micro-marketer, Visualizer, and Value Driver Buyer alignment, risk mitigation, and the myth of control Situational fluency, and the role of technology Focused sales enablement, and buyer-aligned learning and development Implementation and establishment of a dynamic sales process The book describes the essential competencies for collaborative selling, and provides indispensable supplemental tools for implementation. Written by recognized authorities with insights into global markets, The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the essential resource for today's sales professional.

What do winners of major sales do differently than the sellers who almost won, but ultimately came in second place? Mike Schultz and John Doerr, bestselling authors and world-renowned sales experts, set out to find the answer. They studied more than 700 business-to-business purchases made by buyers who represented a total of $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. When they compared the winners to the second-place finishers, they found surprising results. Not only do sales winners sell differently, they sell radically differently, than the second-place finishers. In recent years, buyers have increasingly seen products and services as replaceable. You might think this would mean that the sale goes to the lowest bidder. Not true! A new breed of seller—the insight seller—is winning the sale with strong prices and margins even in the face of increasing competition and commoditization. In Insight Selling, Schultz and Doerr share the surprising results of their research on what sales winners do differently, and outline exactly what you need to do to transform yourself and your team into insight sellers. They introduce a simple three-level model based on what buyers say tip the scales in favor of the winners: Level 1 "Connect." Winners connect the dots between customer needs and company solutions, while also connecting with buyers as people. Level 2 "Convince." Winners convince buyers that they can achieve maximum return, that the risks are acceptable, and that the seller is the best choice among all options. Level 3 "Collaborate." Winners collaborate with buyers by bringing new ideas to the table, delivering new ideas and insights, and working with buyers as a team. They also found that much of the popular and current advice given to sellers can damage sales results. Insight Selling is both a strategic and tactical guide that will separate the good advice from the bad, and teach you how to put the three levels of selling to work to inspire buyers, influence their agendas, and maximize value. If you want to find yourself and your team in the winner's circle more often, this book is a must-read.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart are "category killers." Why? One key to their astounding success is that they have mastered the art of creating highly attractive partner and customer value propositions. They have all built their business on the principles and practices of Partnership Marketing to offer superior products, create long-term distribution opportunities, new revenue streams for their businesses, and increased brand awareness on a world-wide level. Developing an affiliation with the right partner allows both parties to realize successes that they could not have otherwise achieved on their own by transforming their individual strengths into mutual performance. Whether you're an entrepreneur working to expand your customer base and increase value or a corporation looking for cost-effective ways to stimulate growth and brand-presence on a tight budget, Partnership Marketing is a practical in-depth guide to this core business concept. A powerful strategy in good times, partnership marketing is an excellent way to gain competitive advantage and grow your business even in tough, recessionary economic conditions. As marketing resources are being slashed everywhere, coupled with employee lay-offs and cutbacks to existing programs, partnership marketing is a creative way to do more with less. Partnership Marketing provides the complete how-to of collaborating successfully with other organizations, including: how to align PM objectives to your resources; how to assess what you have to offer a partner-brand and how to leverage your core strengths; how to search for the right partner-brand; how to assess the pros and cons of partnering with other brands; and much more.

This book examines issues and implications of digital and social media marketing for emerging markets. These markets necessitate substantial adaptations of developed theories and approaches employed in the Western world. The book investigates problems specific to emerging markets, while identifying new theoretical constructs and practical applications of digital marketing. It addresses topics such as electronic word of mouth (eWOM), demographic differences in digital marketing, mobile marketing, search engine advertising, among others. A radical increase in both temporal and geographical reach is empowering consumers to exert influence on brands, products, and services. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and digital media are having a significant impact on the way people communicate and fulfil their socio-economic, emotional and material needs. These technologies are also being harnessed by businesses for various purposes including distribution and selling of goods, retailing of consumer services, customer relationship management, and influencing consumer behaviour by employing digital marketing practices. This book considers this, as it examines the practice and research related to digital and social media marketing.

Sales isn't about pushing products or being efficient; it's about building the right systems to manage and empower your salespeople. If you read nothing else on sales, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how to create the conditions for sales success. This book will inspire you to: Understand your customer's buying center Integrate your sales and marketing operations Assess your business cycle and its impact on your sales force Transition away from solution sales Leverage the power of micromarkets Introduce tiebreaker selling and consensus selling Motivate your sales force properly This collection of articles includes "Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying," by Thomas V. Bonoma; "Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing," by Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Suj Krishnaswamy; "Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle," by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer; "The End of Solution Sales," by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; "Selling into Micromarkets," by Manish Goyal, Maryanne Q. Hancock, and Homayoun Hatami; "Dismantling the Sales Machine," by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; "Tiebreaker Selling," by James C. Anderson, James A. Narus, and Marc Wouters; "Making the Consensus Sale," by Karl Schmidt, Brent Adamson, and Anna Bird; "The Right Way to Use Compensation," by Mark Roberge; "How to Really Motivate Salespeople," by Doug J. Chung; and "Getting Beyond 'Show Me the Money, '" an interview with Andris Zoltners by Daniel McGinn.