Question

Topic: Other

Seperate Or Combined Sales & Marketing Dept?

Posted by Anonymous on 6/27/2008 at 3:57 PM ET 250 Points
I am not sure if my dilemma is easy or not. We have two competing companies. The owners made a share swap and formed a new holding company owns both. One of the main products (name it X) of Company A is the only product of Company B. Owners want to keep the name of both companies in the market for the same product (X). Currently, there are three S&M depts. One for Company B and two for company A (for two main products X & Y). Management is not sure how to reorganize Sales & Marketing Depts. I am a S&M Manager in Company A in which I have competition with Co. B. I always say that Sales is a part of the entire Marketing process. Accordingly, we can not separate Sales (Management) from Marketing. Owners think of creating a new Marketing dept. in the holding company and two separate Sales Depts in company (A & B) for product X and keep S&M dept. in Company A for product Y. Would you advise me about this situation and whether i am correct or not and what org. should I suggest to them?
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  • Posted by melissa.paulik on 6/27/2008 at 4:07 PM Accepted
    This is complicated. There's probably way more to it than you even had time to talk about in your post. Certainly there are branding issues involved here. I suspect there's a lot of corporate culture and politics as well.

    This is one of those times when I would consider hiring an outside consultant--especially if you're concerned that no matter what you suggest management will do whatever they want to anyway. Backing your recommendations with help from an outside expert can really go a long way.

    I would get someone in from the outside who could take a closer look at the situation and recommend the "right" way to approach this. You need someone who isn't a specialist in any one area of sales or marketing, but can look at the situation holistically and who has a lot of experience to draw on.

    Good luck!

    Melissa
  • Posted on 6/27/2008 at 4:19 PM Author
    Thanks Melissa. You are absolutely correct specially in the issue of politics. Unfortunately, we have hired a consultant but it was not useful tool due to many political reasons. What I am looking for is to find supportive documents such as organization charts of big companies that show the Marketing VP is on top in the high management and there are different sales directors might reports to him (this is my opinion) or some sort of other documents talk about the organization of Sales & Marketing. I forgot to mention that our business is B2B.
  • Posted on 6/27/2008 at 4:25 PM Member
    Each situation is different, so I say this knowing I don't have all the facts.

    I lean towards having advertising and marketing and publicity as one department, but sales separate. However, the managers of sales departments should work closely with the marketing department providing information of what the salespeople are hearing/saying. I would combine the marketing department of both companies but keep the sales departments separate from each other, but communicating.
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 6/27/2008 at 4:35 PM Member
    Sales and Marketing need to be under the same Executive...

    I suggest
    Corporate - VP Sales and Marketing
    Corporate - Marketing Group - Services both companies
    Company - Sales Departments

  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 6/27/2008 at 7:32 PM Member
    To add to Frank's good input:

    Corporate - VP Sales and Marketing
    Corporate - Marketing Group - Services both companies
    Company - Sales Departments


    Maybe you can take "sales" and "marketing" out completely with --

    Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

    good luck,

    Steve
  • Posted by malkosbm on 6/30/2008 at 3:15 AM Member
    Generally marketing has a moral superiority on the Sales. In fact, the marketer works the medium and long term, while the sales is geared more towards the short term. The marketer guide sales to the strategic objectfis.
    Marketing motivate and propose solutions for the Sales to achieve objectives.

    In your case, i think that the solution is to create one marketing service for 2 companies which work with 2 sales team. Each team can be specialiser in a channel distribution (for exp : the sales team of company A work for supermarket or details and the sales team of the company B work for professionnel)...
    Hope that help you
  • Posted on 7/1/2008 at 3:01 PM Accepted
    These issues always come up in organisations where:
    1. Individuals/businesses are too product focused
    2. Individuals are title or Department focused.

    I would urge that in this difficult position you find yourself, to focus purely on your customer base. By doing this you shift your mind from a internal focus to one of and outward customer focused business which will truly ensure that you remain competitive. By doing this you will define clearly who your customer segments are for products X, Y, Z irrelevant from which business they originated from.

    By profiling your customers in this way , you then make them more important and not individuals within your organisation. Once you have this focus defined you can then talk about organograms and methods of servicing them.

    A completely new organisation structure might look like:
    1. VP Customer Marketing
    2. Customer/Channel Managers (Split by key segments)
    3. Sales Reps


    These sales reps then sell the full bouquet of products and therefore you win by maximising the scale benefits that sales teams enjoy when selling across your businesses portfolio of products, while still addressing the needs and wants of your customer base.....

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