If you work in either sales or marketing, then you must read this excellent
It’s written with quite an FMCG slant but still contains some valuable (and humourous) insights into the attitudes of sales and marketing teams to each other.
It characterises sales teams as downstream and tactically focused on short term results, and marketing as upstream more strategic and selective thinkers.
But most importantly it highlights how the most successful businesses manage to successfully integrate both disciplines; for example supporting a sales team with a targeted direct marketing or advertising campaign with both sides sharing common objectives. The article also goes on to say that neither team should introduce anything to the market without checking with the other first.
