Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions

摘要

Careers evolve over time and can take many paths as they develop. Within marketing and sales, a common variant of career progression is to begin in a sales position and then advance internally into a marketing role. Doing so provides employees with unique but complementary sets of skills, experiences, and perspectives that may increase their efficacy as marketers. However, sales-to-marketing job transitions (SMJTs) can also be suboptimal and result in adverse outcomes. Although the sales-marketing interface literature has examined how the two functions work together, the SMJT process is unclear. To provide an understanding of this phenomenon, the authors conduct in-depth interviews across a host of different companies and industries with 56 informants who successfully transitioned intraorganizationally from sales to marketing, informants who transitioned but did not remain in marketing, and executives. They develop a theoretical model consisting of transition motivation, acquisition, preparation, and encounter. They also advance individual and organizational facilitators of SMJTs and discuss SMJTs' potential positive and negative effects on the organization.