MarketingManagement.pdf

This arrangement permits the CEO to obtain a more balanced view of company op-

portunities and problems. Suppose sales start slipping. The sales vice president might

recommend hiring more salespeople, raising sales compensation, running a sales con-

test, providing more sales training, or cutting the price so the product will be easier to

sell. The marketing vice president will want to analyze the forces affecting the market-

place. Is the company going after the right segments and customers? Do the target cus-

tomers have a changing view of the company’s and competitors’ products? Are changes

in product features, styling, packaging, services, distribution, or promotion warranted?

Stage 4: Modern Marketing Department

Although the sales and marketing vice presidents should work together, their rela-

tionship is often strained and marked by distrust. The sales vice president resents ef-

forts to make the sales force less important in the marketing mix, and the marketing

vice president seeks a larger budget for non-sales force activities.

The marketing manager’s task is to identify opportunities and prepare marketing

strategies and programs. Salespeople are responsible for implementing these programs.

Marketers rely on marketing research, try to identify and understand market segments,

spend time in planning, think long term, and aim to produce profits and gains in

market share. Salespeople, in contrast, rely on street experience, try to understand

each individual buyer, spend time in face-to-face selling, think short term, and try to

meet their sales quotas.

If there is too much friction between sales and marketing, the company president

might place marketing activities back under the sales vice president, instruct the ex-

ecutive vice president to handle conflicts, or place the marketing vice president in

charge of everything, including the sales force. This last solution is the basis of the

modern marketing department, a department headed by a marketing and sales exec-

utive vice president with managers reporting from every marketing function, includ-

ing sales management (Figure 6-5[d]).

Stage 5: Effective Marketing Company

A company can have an excellent marketing department and yet fail at marketing.

Much depends on how the other departments view customers. If they point to the

marketing department and say, “They do the marketing,” the company has not im-

plemented effective marketing. Only when all employees realize that their jobs are

created by customers does the company become an effective marketer.^1

Stage 6: Process- and Outcome-Based Company

Many companies are now refocusing their structure on key processes rather than de-

partments. Departmental organization is increasingly viewed as a barrier to the smooth

performance of fundamental business processes such as new-product development,

customer acquisition and retention, order fulfillment, and customer service. In the

interest of achieving customer-related process outcomes, companies are now ap-

pointing process leaders who manage cross-disciplinary teams. Marketing and sales-

people are consequently spending an increasing percentage of their time as process

team members. As a result, marketing personnel may have a solid-line responsibility

to their teams and a dotted-line responsibility to the marketing department. Each

team sends periodic evaluations of the marketing member’s performance to the mar-

keting department. The marketing department is also responsible for training its mar-

keting personnel, assigning them to new teams, and evaluating their overall

performance (Figure 6-5[e]).

ORGANIZING THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT

Modern marketing departments take numerous forms. The marketing department may

be organized by function, geographic area, products, or customer markets.

Functional Organization

The most common form of marketing organization consists of functional specialists

reporting to a marketing vice president, who coordinates their activities. Figure 6-6

part five

Managing and

Delivering Marketing

(^682) Programs
President
(a) Stage 1: Simple Sales Department
Sales VP
Other marketing
functions
(hired from
outside)
Sales force
FIGURE 6-5
Stages in the Evolution of the
Marketing Department
President
(b) Stage 2: Sales Department
with Ancillary Marketing Functions
Sales VP

• Marketing Director


• Other marketing
  functions (internal
  staff and external
  support)

Sales force