Ever since the term “marketing” was coined there’s been a debate over whether it should take precedence over sales.
This long-standing debate over whether sales or marketing should be more central to a business strategy is crucial for understanding how businesses can grow and thrive.
Each function plays a distinct role in generating revenue and building long-term relationships with customers, but the question remains: which one should take precedence?
In the second part of this series, we will look at Kotler’s Expanded Marketing Process to see how it compares to The Mackenzie-Bauer Framework of Sales Leadership.
Kotler’s Expanded Marketing Model
Developed by Philip Kotler, often dubbed the father of modern marketing theory, this model is a comprehensive framework that positions marketing as the central function, guiding the organisation’s efforts to understand and meet customer needs while ultimately generating sales as an outcome of marketing efforts.
Kotler’s Expanded Marketing Model (Kotler et al, 2019) includes five distinct steps:
1. Understanding the marketplace and customer needs.
This step focuses on market research, identifying customer segments, and understanding their needs and behaviours.
2. Designing a customer-driven marketing strategy.
This involves selecting target markets and creating value propositions to meet the specific needs of those segments.
3. Constructing an integrated marketing programme.
The 4Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) form the backbone of this step, ensuring the marketing mix is optimised
to deliver value.
4. Building profitable customer relationships.
Through effective customer relationship management (CRM) and engagement strategies, businesses foster loyalty and repeat business.
5. Capturing value to create profits and customer equity.
The end goal of the marketing process is to generate profits by building long-term customer relationships that create sustainable value for the company.
In Kotler’s model, sales are an outcome of these marketing efforts rather than the starting point. Sales come into play after marketing has paved the way by understanding the customer, designing appropriate strategies, and building relationships (Kotler & Armstrong, 2018).
While the Mackenzie-Bauer Framework emphasises direct revenue generation, Kotler’s marketing model advocates a broader customer-centric approach, suggesting that businesses should focus first on understanding the customer, which then enables sales success.
Comparing the two approaches
1. Role of sales versus marketing
In the Mackenzie-Bauer Framework, sales leadership drives business success. This reflects a philosophy whereby sales strategies not only generate immediate revenue but also shape the overall business structure and value chain. Marketing plays a secondary role, serving as a tool to generate leads and support the sales process. By contrast, in Kotler’s Expanded Marketing Model marketing is the central function that leads the way in understanding customer needs and designing strategies that satisfy those needs. Sales are seen as part of the final stages of the process, not as the primary driver (Kotler & Keller, 2019).
2. Customer Interaction and feedback
The Mackenzie-Bauer Framework emphasises the importance of direct customer interaction through sales teams and all customer contact points. Sales professionals have real-time conversations with customers, allowing them to gather immediate feedback and tailor solutions accordingly. This direct link between sales and the customer provides agility and responsiveness that marketing teams may not always achieve. In contrast, Kotler’s model advocates for a more data-driven approach, using market research and analytics to understand customer behaviour on a larger scale. This approach enables businesses to design broad-reaching strategies that can scale across multiple customer segments (Kotler et al, 2019). While marketing may not offer the same level of immediacy, it provides a more structured understanding of long-term customer trends.
3. Flexibility and adaptability
The Mackenzie-Bauer Framework promotes flexibility and adaptability, as sales teams can adjust their strategies based on direct customer feedback and changing market conditions. By putting sales leadership at the heart of the business, companies can pivot quickly to capitalise on new opportunities.
On the other hand, Kotler’s marketing model emphasises strategic planning and long-term relationship building. While this can sometimes result in slower response times to immediate market changes, it creates a strong foundation for sustained growth by prioritising customer satisfaction and loyalty over quick wins (Kotler & Armstrong, 2018).
4. Revenue generation
A key strength of the Mackenzie-Bauer Framework is its focus on direct revenue generation and on instigating a sales mind-set culture. Sales teams are responsible for closing deals and driving income, which makes this approach highly effective in industries where fast results and high sales volumes are necessary (Zoltners et al, 2009). Marketing, in this methodology, serves as a tactical function to assist in lead generation but is not the primary driver of revenue. Referrals for future sales are not the exclusive purview of the sales department but by every customer contact point. The culture extends to inter-departmental connections, where each stage in the value chain treats internal teams as they would customers to keep happy. “Internal customer relationship works best when the organisation has an internal structure based on business processes as opposed to functional departments.” (Eloka, 2022).
In Kotler’s model, revenue generation is the result of a carefully constructed marketing plan that builds customer value over time.
By focusing on customer needs and delivering tailored solutions, businesses can build long-term customer relationships that lead to
repeat sales and customer loyalty (Kotler & Keller, 2019).
Kotler’s model emphasises promotion and long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can lead to sustainable revenue over time (Kotler et al, 2019). However, it may lack the immediacy, tactical or nuanced responsiveness needed in highly competitive or fast-moving markets.
Conclusion
Once the sales strategy is in place, then the marketing priorities should be the servant of the sales department and be constantly shifting to underpin all sales activities. It follows that the marketing section in business plans should be replaced by a strategic sales plan inclusive of a supporting marketing plan. A business plan that shows a direct link to the overarching sales strategy is more constructive than a marketing plan that shows no direct link to sales.
Both approaches offer valuable insights, but neither is universally superior. The Mackenzie-Bauer Framework highlights the importance of sales leadership, direct revenue and lead generation, making it potentially highly effective in industries where quick results are essential or for entrepreneur start-ups where it can be integrated into the culture by a team of enthusiastic founders. However, the Kotler Expanded Marketing Model provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding and engaging with customers, ensuring that businesses build long-term relationships that drive sustainable growth.
Ultimately, the most effective business strategy may lie in integrating both approaches, ensuring that sales and marketing work together to achieve both immediate results and long-term success. Integrating Kotler’s model can support building trust, and sales but there needs to be a very clear connection between marketing and resulting sales.
Sales leadership is not aimed to focus on a transactional experience; it’s about creating customer value and a memorable buying experience.
Missed part one of this article? Catch up with it here.
For more interesting reads, subscribe to IJoST.
IJoST is now owned by ISP, and is the dedicated journal for sales professionals, educators and leaders
Written by Dr Colin MacKenzie and Dr Alexander C Bauer
Dr Colin Mackenzie, MSc, FHEA is an Associate Professor of Applied Sciences at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, a specialist lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, and is a member of the advisory board for the South East Asian Sales Competition (SEASAC), an Erasmus+ project. He has over 40 years’ sales experience and is a high-growth business consultant. He holds a Doctoral degree in Business Management, a Master of Science degree in Quality and Business Excellence, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority.
Contact: colin.mackenzie@wittenborg.eu
Dr Alexander C Bauer is an Associate Professor of Applied Sciences at the Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences with locations in the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. He has more than a decade of international sales and management experience. Before he joined academia in 2014, he worked as an International Sales Manager, leading global sales teams and daily negotiations with customers and suppliers on a global level with business partners in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He studied Business Management with a major in Marketing and Sales in Germany and Estonia and holds a PhD in International Business Management. Besides being a lecturer, he is also a Trainer for Presentation Skills, Rhetoric and Sales.
Contact: alexander.bauer@wittenborg.eu
References
Ahli, M, Hilmi, M F, & Abudaqa, A (2024) “Ethical sales behavior influencing trust, loyalty, green experience, and satisfaction in UAE public entrepreneur firms,” Aptisi Transactions on Technopreneurship (ATT), 6(2), 149-168.
Blythe, J, & Megicks, P (2010), Marketing planning: Strategy, environment, and context, Pearson Education. Canterino, F, Cirella, S, Piccoli, B, & Shani, A B (Rami) (2020), “Leadership and change mobilization: The mediating role of distributed leadership,” Journal of Business Research, 108, 42–51.
Eloka, A (2022) “Internal Customers: The Asset of the Humanistic Workplace,” In: Ogunyemi, K, Okoye, E, Ogunyemi, O (eds) Humanistic Perspectives in Hospitality and Tourism, Volume II. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Friend, S B, Curasi, C F, Boles, J S, & Bellenger, D N (2014). “Why are you really losing sales opportunities? A buyers’ perspective on the determinants of key account sales failures,” Industrial Marketing Management, 43(7), 1124-1135.
Hult, G T M, Morgeson, F V, Morgan, N A, Mithas, S, & Fornell, C (2017) “Do managers know what their customers think and why?” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(1), 37-54.
Kotler, P, & Armstrong, G (2018) Principles of marketing (17th ed.). Pearson Education.
Kotler, P, Keller, K L, Brady, M, Goodman, M, & Hansen, T (2019) Marketing management (4th European ed.). Pearson Education.
Laugesen, L, & Yuan, Y’, “What Factors Contributed to the Success of Apple’s iPhone?,” 2010 Ninth International Conference on Mobile Business and 2010 Ninth Global Mobility Roundtable (ICMB-GMR), Athens, Greece, 2010, pp. 91-99, doi: 10.1109/ICMB-GMR.2010.63.
Mackenzie, C (2021) “Introducing the Psychological contract into Sales Education,” International Journal of Sales Transformation, 7.3, 16-18.
Mackenzie, C (2023). Sustainable sales – a definition. International Journal of Sales Transformation, 9.1, 40–43.
Cravens, D W, Le Meunier-FitzHugh, K, & Piercy, N F (Eds.). (2012) The Oxford handbook of strategic sales and sales management. OUP Oxford.
Spillane, J P (2006), Distributed Leadership, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Stoll, L and Seashore Louis, K (2007), Professional Learning Communities, Open University Press, New York, NY.