Organizing Marketing and Sales

Marketing and economics scholars from Europe provide 18 essays on the organization of marketing and sales, emphasizing the ideas that sales and marketing are about organizing and that business firms are gradually moving toward the solutions business. They address contemporary developments and challenges in sales organizations, the challenges a multinational and multiproduct firm may need to address, using the case study of ABB Robotics, and key texts in the field of marketing organization, then value-based sales, organizing sales and marketing during a process in which a firm has moved from product to solution-oriented sales, the challenges of a change value logic in the managing of the business-to-business sales process, and the balance between structure and people. Subsequent sections consider organizing interactions with customers, including developments in purchasing organization, interfaces between suppliers and customers, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems and tools; organizing for business development and extended customer offerings, including technology transfer and implications for changes in interaction parties and interaction patterns, barriers and enablers to creating sustainable business solutions, and problems for a supplier and combining two or more differing business logics; and new perspectives on marketing organizing processes, including omni-channel retailing and post-human marketers, the role of the market system, and the role of marketing and sales.

• PART I: INTRODUCTION: ORGANIZING MARKETING AND SALES 1. Contemporary developments and challenges in sales organizations – some observations; Björn Axelsson 2. Marketing re-organization in a globalized market: The case of ABB Robotics; Per Andersson, Björn Axelsson, Kristoffer Jönsson & Ebba Laurin 3. Marketing organization research and ideas revisited; Per Andersson PART II: SALES MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION REVISITED 4. Value-based selling in the service dominated businesses landscape: Creating, acting and organizing to improve customer’s profits; Björn Axelsson & Mats Vilgon 5. Organizing for sales in VUCA contexts: The transformation process from products to solution sales; Ebba Laurin 6. Business maneuvering: A dynamic view of B2B selling processes; Lars-Johan Åge 7. Organizational balancing – an integrated view of sales management; Lars-Johan Åge PART III: ORGANIZING INTERACTIONS WITH CUSTOMERS 8. The other side of the coin – on developments in procurement practices and their implications for sales; Björn Axelsson 9. Successful and value-creating interplay between buyer and seller: Organizing mutuality; Björn Axelsson 10. Potential business improvements when utilizing CRM tools – and challenges in making it happen; Dariusz Osowski 11. The next generation CRM tools: Bridging the gaps between sales needs and CRM tools architecture; Sarah Wikner PART IV: ORGANIZING FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND EXTENDED CUSTOMER OFFERINGS 12. Outside in – to capture the in-betweens: Organizing the socio-technical embedding process of new technology; Min Tian 13. Creating and delivering sustainable customer solutions: On organizing capabilities in the era of servitization; Lei Huang 14. Marketing and sales in ambidextrous organizations: Organizational challenges from digitalization; Per Andersson, Ebba Laurin & Christopher Rosenqvist PART V: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON MARKETING ORGANIZING PROCESSES 15. Towards a conceptual model for analyzing marketing re-organization and transition processes; Per Andersson, Christopher Rosenqvist & Daniel Grenblad 16. Organizing marketing and sales in a networked business world; Per Andersson & Björn Axelsson 17. Brand orientation as method to inspire, change culture and lead the implementation of solutions business; Cecilia Cederlund 18. Future studies of marketing and sales organization; Per Andersson, Björn Axelsson & Christopher Rosenqvist