CIM: ‘Marketing needs to merge with sales to safeguard its future’
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Companies need to merge their marketing and sales functions or risk damaging bottom line growth, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).
CIM forecasts that separate sales and marketing departments will disappear over the next ten years. The shift, it argues, would stop the “siloed thinking” and “subtle conflict” that stunts growth.
Aligning the two departments, the Institute continues, will lead to improvements in productivity, while reducing duplication and wastage.
It adds: “Those that continue to treat them as independent entities will appear out of touch and pay a high price in loss of business opportunities. Marketing’s reputation will suffer too, with the discipline inevitably reaching the end of its path with no way of moving forward.
“In the current economic climate - with marketing already being relegated in many organisations and with even tougher times predicted for the UK’s future - this is not a welcome option.”
Nick Porter, European sales and marketing director at Iron Mountain, says the two functions need to share accountability for revenue and margin results.
He adds: “Organisations are becoming increasingly intolerant of separate sales and marketing departments fighting with each other rather than focusing on revenue growth and ROI. The challenge today in all organisations and particularly in the current economic climate is about meeting the buyers’ needs and growing the top and bottom lines.”
The report, “marketing and sales fusion”, has been published to mark CIM’s centenary year.
Readers' comments (5)
Neil Hopkins | Wed, 7 Dec 2011 3:16 pm
Very interesting indeed - especially when Mark Ritson was going on about just this topic a while back (http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/know-when-to-shut-the-door-on-a-customer/3029548.article)
Marketing is about getting people to the door and everything that entails. Sales is surely about closing the deal?
While linked, they are two different disciplines.
I do believe that the two teams should work far more closely together - perhaps this is the fault of the marketers for building themselves a silo?
This is very much about corporate culture change however, regardless of departmental titles.
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Simon Allen | Mon, 12 Dec 2011 4:08 pm
If sales isn’t a function of marketing the structure for cohesiveness doesn't exist. If this is the case, you don't have a sales or marketing issue, you have a structural issue - those that are faced with this problem should look long and hard at organisational structure.
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Anonymous | Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:41 pm
This is not really a question of two disciplines, they are quite clearly different. However, in many organisations the issue is a one of top down cultural management - who is managing the internal communication and relationship between the two disciplines? Who is driving the information flow from the consumer back to the business, then on to marketing. If nobody owns and and is accountable for this collective then sales and marketing can't possibly function effectively in the longterm. This is an issue of cultural integration and management...
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Anonymous | Thu, 15 Dec 2011 1:42 pm
This just proves how out out of touch CIM is with the real world. As someone who is trying to finish their postgraduate course I've found them to be far too academic, and not interested in the real world of marketing. It's all far too clinical and detached, so this story doesn't surprise me in the least.
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Damian Ngere Ogola | Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:19 am
Marketing is more superior than sales.Organizations that still treat the two as different departments are out of touch with the changes in the industry.The two departments were actually merged long time ago.The two functions that used to be separate are now in one fold known as the Sales and marketing department and headed by one individual,who is considered senior in the management level.The head may be the marketing manager,sales and marketing manager,marketing director etc, depending on the organization structure.
What is important is that the two departments should work in harmony to create awareness and boost the sales for the company rather than to fight each other for supremacy.
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