Aligning sales management and relationship marketing in the services sector

Salespeople, although the emissaries of the firm's marketing message, find themselves caught amidst neu developments in the market place without the necessary guidelines for facing the new challenges presented to them, The separate development of the fields of Sales Management and Relationship Marketing has left unexplored the transition of salespeople from the 'close the sale' imperative to 'build long-term customer relationships'. Our study explores the selling job in the relational sates context of the sen,ices sector and highlights a number of key issues for the development of the theory and practice of relationship orientated sales management.