Building bridges between sales and marketing

13th March 2026 |   Nick de Cent

For businesses to thrive, sales and marketing need to reforge their relationship.

I’ve been writing about sales and sales management since the mid-1980s – that’s around 40 years. For almost 20 years, I was heading up a marketing communications agency. So, I’ve observed the sales and marketing relationship from both perspectives. During much of that time it is fair to say that sales and marketing were two disciplines working in parallel but often without the strategic integration necessary to optimise business performance.

Part of the problem has been professional rivalry between marketing and sales, and a view held by many in the past that marketing was the respectable, scientific discipline, while sales was, dare I say it, for “chancers” and those with the “gift of the gab”. We see this in the history of the UK’s professional bodies. The origins of the Chartered Institute of Marketing lie back in the early 20th century with a meeting of sales managers in 1911. Ten years later the organisation was to become the Incorporated Sales Managers Association, with ladies admitted to Association events in 1927.

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