Know: ‘timing is everything.’

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Marketing Insights from A to Z

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would also like the accountants to give them better measures
of the profitability of different geographical areas, market seg-
ments, channels, and individual customers. This information
would help marketers allocate their efforts closer to the areas
of greater profit.
• Even within the larger marketing group, there are frictions
between marketing, the sales force, and customer service.
Marketing began as a function to help the sales force sell bet-
ter. Marketing helped by getting leads through advertising,
brochures, and other communications. Later, marketing gath-
ered information to estimate market potential, assign sales
quotas, and develop sales forecasts. Salespeople often have
complained about marketing setting sales quotas or company
prices too high, saying that more money should go to the
sales force (and less to advertising) to raise their compensation
or to hire more salespeople. When marketing and sales get
into conflict, sales often wins because salespeople are responsi-
ble for short-term results.
As for customer service, this has typically been treated 
as less important than getting the sale. When customers
complained to customer service, salespeople could re-
sent the watchdog role customer service plays, although
good customer service is in their best interest in the long
run.
The fact is that these departments are in active competition for a
limited budget, each making the case that they can spend the money
better. Each department also wants to feel important and respected
by the other groups.
The challenge is how to break down departmental walls and
harmonize the efforts of different departments to work as a team.
Here are two approaches:
Marketing Department Interfaces
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1. Companies would hold meetings of two departments at a
time to express their views of each other’s strengths and
weaknesses and offer their suggestions for how to improve
their relationship.
2. Companies are increasingly managing processes rather than
functions and putting together cross-disciplinary teams to
manage these processes. The various members begin to ap-
preciate each other’s point of view, and hopefully this pro-
duces better understanding.
arketing Ethics
Companies often must choose between taking the high road and
making the decent decision versus taking the low road and breaching
their customers’ trust. Tylenol took the high road when someone
tampered with its pills. It immediately recalled and destroyed its
stock. Intel took the middle road because it hesitated to replace a
chip that had a minor defect. Ford on occasions has taken the low
road by denying faults with some of its cars.
Business practices are often under attack because business situa-
tions routinely pose tough ethical dilemmas. One can go back to
Howard Bowen’s classic questions about the responsibilities of a
businessperson: