Integrated Sales and Marketing Management Successful Integration of Marketing and Sales After Mergers & Acquisitions

Today's business-to-business (B2B) markets are characterized by high competitiveness and market saturation. As a consequence the growth potential in most B2B markets is limited. Under such conditions for most companies either merging with or acquiring a competitor are options for substantial growth. Some companies are opting for a vertical expansion via mergers and acquisitions (M&A). This book will focus on horizontal M&As. There are many successful and less successful examples of M&As. The merger between Daimler of Germany and Chrysler of the US is one of the biggest failures in the recent history of mergers and acquisitions. In contrary Cisco Systems has successfully acquired more than 120 companies, from small startups to large, well-established firms such as Linksys, Scientific Atlanta, and WebEx since 1993. The question is why some business leaders do a better job in dealing with the many challenges for all units of the newly formed cooperation than others. Usually corporate management's focus is directed to internal issues as integrating the employees, products, services, operations, systems, and processes of acquired companies. Hence, customer relationships and key markets are getting less attention. Since customer relationships and customer-related tasks are neglected too often during preparation and execution of M&As, there is a significant risk of losing customers during the M&A integration phase. The strong internal orientation is frequently accompanied by a decline in service quality and responsiveness to customer requirements. Not surprisingly, this can result in customers' uncertainties about their future relationship with the merging firms (e.g. prices, quality of products and services, contact persons). Customers are reacting with restraint to this development. And competitors' actions often reinforce this effect as they take advantage of the situation and try to alienate customers in order to lure them away from an often long established relationsh