Business Management Project: Sales and Marketing Integration Analysis

This business management project delves into the impact of marketing on organizational success. It begins with an introduction to business management and the importance of adapting to external environmental changes. The project employs both qualitative and quantitative research approaches to analyze the integration of sales and marketing. The qualitative approach, grounded in inductive theory, uses interviews with sales and marketing executives to determine the effectiveness of value creation within the sales-marketing interface. The quantitative approach, using questionnaires and correlation coefficients, investigates the role of sales and marketing integration in improving strategic responsiveness to market changes. A literature review synthesizes key insights from existing research on sales-marketing integration. The project concludes with recommendations for effective integration, emphasizing the need for internal evaluation and equal focus on both sales and marketing functions. This project is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of marketing's crucial role in business management.

Business Management
project

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Qualitative approach........................................................................................................................3
a) Introduction.............................................................................................................................3
b) Methodology:-........................................................................................................................4
c) Main findings and recommendations......................................................................................4
Quantitative approach .....................................................................................................................5
a) Introduction.............................................................................................................................5
b) Methodology:-........................................................................................................................6
c) Main findings and recommendations......................................................................................6
Literature review..............................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Business management is refers to the act of organising and managing the activities,
resources as well as people within the organisation that contribute toward the accomplishment of
organisational goal and objectives. The business management consist of both internal as well as
external management of operations to achieve success. But the external management is quite
typical to perform as it anticipated regular changes with the external environment which are
required to be adopted by organisation on timely manner. In this marketing activities plays a
crucial role by maintaining regular interaction with customers so that they would remain
influenced even with the changes performed by the company in its operations or products. For
performing detail investigation in this report two articles are selected that are based on
qualitative and quantitative type of investigation so that literature review can be performed to
develop understanding over marketing impact on business management.

Qualitative approach
a) Introduction
Background:- The importance that the sale and marketing integration holds within
creation of value is widely accepted by the businesses. It is so because when the marketing as
well as sale function within an organisation, it would be able to deliver more seamless customer
value that results into achievement of superior market performance. This integration refers to the
collaboration and co-operation within the work of two department across their functional
boundaries which make it more easier for the company to deal with the changing market
condition as well as competitive realities. The changes that get anticipated within the market
firstly affect the sales of an organisation and as a result of which its performance get affected.
But with the proper integration of sales and marketing it become easier to perform marketing and
promotional activities as per the changes anticipates and customer demand so that proper
information can be provided to the customers. This in turn also help in increasing the sales and
profitability of the company.
Aims:-
“To determine the effectiveness of value creating within sales-marketing interface.”
Objective:-
The main objective of this investigation are mentioned below:-
 To identify the boundary condition of marketing's role and its impact on the integration
of marketing-sales interface.
 To determine the marketing role impact over the relationship between integration
interface and value creation effort of a salesperson.
b) Methodology:-
For performing this investigation appropriately, the investigation is grounded over the
theory approach and also known as inductive approach as it focus over the formation of a new
theory or phenomenon which is grounded over the first hand information collected from the
participants. To support this information more emphasis was put on the qualitative mean on
investigation as it provide theoretical framework to gather and represent information in detailed
manner. In addition to this for performing this investigation effectively both primary and

secondary data collection methods are used. Among them, primary information is gathered by
conducting interview to gather data from forty three sales and marketing executives and this
information then compare and integrated with the existing understanding that adopted through
literature review. In addition to this the research design adopted for this investigation is
exploratory which help in performing in depth evaluation of point of view collected from the
informants. The data gathered from the respondents are interpreted by arranging in accordance
with theme and then arrived at rigorous analysis as well as valid representation of informants'
view point.
c) Main findings and recommendations
From this investigation it has been found that there is a greater diversity exists within the
role of marketing function that is played within an particular organisation. This includes product
management within which marketing is responsible for managing of product by adopting an
entire life cycle as well as marketing communication activities which help in preparing
communicational plans and ensure their availability at field force on timely manner. But the sales
department is responsible for ensuring the delivering of particular product or services to the
customer on timely manner. This integration support in improving and simplifying the practices
of people that are working as field marketer as they closely work with field force and the
changes that get adopted by the company are required to be promoted for its sales. Therefore, the
integration of sales and marketing are more helpful to a business at the time of responding or
adopting the changes.
For effective integration of marketing and sale it is recommended to an organisation that
it firstly evaluate the internal condition of the company for better result before moving forth
integration. This is so because the sales and marketing integration have a direct impact over the
elements like culture, organisational structure, processes and people that are linked with it. This
may affect the overall performance of organisation.
Quantitative approach
a) Introduction
Background:-
Sales and marketing integration is refers to as the extend to which the operations
performed by these two functions get supportive toward one another for the accomplishment of

organisational goals and objectives within coordinated, sequential and synchronised manner.
This article is presented by Lyus. D., Rogers. B., Simms. C., 2011, which focuses on identifying
the manner in which effective marketing respond to market changes. This is because now a days
majority of companies are taking the advantage of integration of marketing with sales that
support in improving the business performance by development as well as implementation of
strategies to deal with the changes that are continuously anticipating within the market. Hence it
is consider to be essential for an organisation to adopt integration of marketing and sale to
survive in market for long run. As macro environmental forces consists of several opportunities
and threats that generated from changing customer expectation and competitors which are
beyond the control of management. These requires an organisation to adopt strategy for dealing
with this changes in order to ensure continuous prosperity of company to achieve sustainability
within marketplace.
Aim:-
To determine the role of sales and marketing integration in improving strategic
responsiveness to market change.
Hypothesis:-
For gathering information in this regard hypothesis are created which are mentioned
below:
Hypothesis 1: The actionable market intelligence quality will be high if marketing and sales are
integrated.
Hypothesis 2: The increase in sales and marketing integration results into more organisational
adaptability to market-driven changes.
b) Methodology:-
This section within an investigation contains the information regarding number of tools
and techniques that are used to gather, evaluate and interpret the information in effective manner.
The research methodology help a researcher by providing them guidance regarding the direction
in which they have to perform work in order to achieve their desire objectives. For performing
this investigation primary information is being collected with the help of questionnaire and the
data gathered through this is then evaluated using correlation coefficient. In addition to this
positivism philosophy is used as it help in evaluating information based on mathematical
evaluation. Despite of this, the current article is based on quantitative investigation which

ensures representation of statistical fact and figure about particular topic of concern and for
effective support to quantitative data deductive approach is used for this article.
In order to represent the information in effective manner the descriptive research design
has been used which support in presenting adequate and detail information to the readers along
with statistical information to make it easier for them to understand numerical facts and figurers.
For the proper evaluation of gathered information within this article, correlation study was
adopted that help in gathering the necessary information for measuring each of the variable and
test their effect over one another with an objective to determine the strength as well as direction
of relationship between marketing and sale.
c) Main findings and recommendations
The major finding of this investigation is that the hypothesis formulated fro investigation
are worth as organisations that are integrated within marketing and sales department are more
able to collect better quality market intelligence and have the capacity of react with market
dynamics. It is also found that organisation's propensity toward changes in respond to market
dynamics are highly get affected by the combination of ability to gather market intelligence and
be able to react over this by formulation and implementation of appropriate strategy. It is so
because the optimal market intelligence totally depends over the interaction between sales and
marketing.
From the information gathered and findings determined it has been found that businesses
get negative outcomes sometimes which are required to be managed to achieve better result out
of sales and marketing integration. Therefore, it is recommended to a business that while
integrating the sales and marketing function all together they must ensure that the focus of
management should be on both the functions equally. This is because in case when management
put more emphasis over performing promotional activities more for becoming adoptive to market
change then it results into increase in the cost of company which may or may not increase the
volume of sale. Hence equal attention must be provided to both the function so that equal return
get be get out of efforts implemented.
Literature review
Literature review refers to the process of critical evaluation of authors point of view for
developing an understanding regarding current topic under study and determining the nature of

this investigation so that it can proceed further. In this section the critical evaluation of article
“Value Creation Within The Sales-Marketing Interface: The Varied Approaches to Integration”
has been performed which is mentioned below:
As per the view point of Rouzies and et. al., 2005, sales marketing integration is refers to
as the extent to which the operations that are carried out by these two functions are supportive to
one another. These integration contributed toward combining the functions of these two
departments in order to brings efficiency and quality in work performed by both the department
fro improving the organisation performance within marketplace. On the other side Creswell,
2007,state that the concurrent marketing within which the sales as well as marketing activities of
an organisation are carried out and coordinated effectively using the cross functional team
support an organisation to gain a seamless integration between these two functions. This further
contribute toward keeping the focus of management experts toward both the market fluctuation
in term of technology, competition, variation, economy and other factor along with the changes
in demand and need of customers toward the organisational product or services. This in turn
contribute toward improving the strategical practices of the organisation so that it would be able
to achieve holistic approach of marketing for keeping product or services aligned with the need
and expectation of customers in order to achieve sustainable competitive edge within the market
place.
Despite of this it is continued by the Guenzi and Troilo, 2006 that in addition with
collaboration and communication among sales and marketing department variables like
motivation, commitment, trust, mutual help and reduction in inter-group conflict along with
development of positive organisational culture also plays a crucial role within the integration of
marketing and sales. Hence, while performing the integration of sales and marketing function it
is crucial for an organisation to focuses on multifunctional training, social orientation and cross
functional team as they plays a crucial role within integration by strengthening the team
dynamics. Despite of this author also state that integration is a kind of multifaceted phenomenon
and these different antecedents are having different effect over the specific integrating
mechanism. This is because the integration is a strategical approach and consider to be a crucial
factor for an organisation as it help them in tapping into market knowledge which a sales force
possess. This in turn further contributed toward formulating effective marketing strategies so that
the information regarding the particular product or services can be effectively delivered to the

customer so that it become easier to influence they for making purchases. But in order to achieve
this it is crucial for the management to develop an effective conceptual framework which
includes a proper combination of structure, process, people and culture along with the integration
of marketing and sales. This is so because integration not get successful until and unless the unit
operations as well as its employees get properly involve within the practices as the maintenance
of this framework support in keeping employees align with their level of operations so that they
can be executed in a sequential manner for the success of integration.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it is clear that marketing is one of the most important and
crucial factor in organization. There is requirement of proper planning related to marketing
through which its positive impact on sales can be achieved. When marketing and sales are in
synchronize manner, then production are performed in appropriate and relevant manner. There is
discussion about integration of marketing and sales activities on the basis of qualitative and
quantitative method. When there is change in demand of consumers, then production and
marketing activities are also altered because marketing has to be done as per new product launch.
There is requirement of proper market and competitors analysis through which it is easy to
understand what is in trend and accordingly changes are implemented.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Krush, M. T. And et. al., 2015. Value Creation within the Sales-Marketing Interface: The Varied
Approaches to Integration. Journal of Selling. 14(2). pp.6-19.
Rouziès, D. and et. al., 2005. Sales and marketing integration: A proposed framework. Journal of
Personal Selling & Sales Management. 25(Spring). 113-22.
Guenzi, P. & Troilo G., 2006. Developing marketing capabilities for customer value creation
through marketing-sales integration. Industrial Marketing Management. 35 (11). 974-
88.
Creswell, J. W., 2007. Qualitative inquiry & research design. (2nd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications.
Online
Lyus. D., Rogers. B., Simms. C., 2011. The role of sales and marketing integration in improving
strategic responsiveness to market change. [Online] Available through:
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/dbm.2011.5>./