Jeff S. Johnson & Joseph M.

Matthes

Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions

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.

Keywords: job transitions, intraorganizational mobility, sales–marketing interface, career development, qualitative

areers represent long-term journeys of preparation and differently and be represented in a variety of forms across

C selection of one or more occupations (Cron and Slocum

1986). When selecting new career paths, professionals
experience a job transition, or a “major change in work role
requirements or work context” (Nicholson and West 1989,
p. 182). A commonly occurring type of job transition is the
sales-to-marketing job transition (SMJT). People may be
attracted to sales positions early in their careers for the benefits
they provide, though many also enter the selling profession to
later move into marketing roles (Johnston and Marshall 2013),
as sales jobs can offer initial conduits into the organization
(Cron and Slocum 1986). Many companies such as Dow
AgroSciences, Union Pacific Railroad, and Stanley Black &
Decker expect employees to begin first in a sales role before
pursuing marketing opportunities in the firm. Given that a
common route for obtaining a marketing role in an organization
is through an initial sales role, understanding this form of job
transition is important for both academics and practitioners.
Furthermore, insights gleaned from the SMJT process can assist
in better cognizing job transitions as a whole.
Understanding SMJTs is also important because substantial
differences may exist between sales and marketing roles. De-
spite marketing and sales being integral to each other’s and the
firm’s success, such differences affect the degree and quality of
cooperation between the two functions (Homburg and Jensen
2007). Furthermore, marketing and sales can be configured
Jeff S. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Henry W. Bloch School
of Management, University of Missouri–Kansas City (email: johnsonjs@
umkc.edu). Joseph M. Matthes is Assistant Professor of Marketing,
Marquette University (email: Joseph.Matthes@Marquette.edu). The au-
thors are profoundly grateful for the insightful and constructive feedback
provided by the JM review team throughout the review process. The authors
also wish to thank Drs. Avinash Malshe, Amit Saini, Timothy M. Reilly, and
Brian I. Spaid for their helpful contributions, as well as the many re-
spondents who generously provided their time and insights. John Hulland
served as area editor for this article.
organizations (Homburg, Jensen, and Krohmer 2008). Mar-
keting is often responsible for big-picture tasks related to the
firm’s product mix, strategies, and promotional efforts (Rouziès
et al. 2005), whereas sales is often more tactical in nature,
focusing on continuous, day-to-day activities including cus-
tomer relationship management (Cespedes 1995; Rouziès et al.
2005). Although both marketing and sales affect many mar-
keting activities (Krohmer, Homburg, and Workman 2002),
marketing often has a greater influence on activities such as
advertising content, satisfaction management, and product
development, while sales often has a greater influence on
geographic market expansion, customer service, and unit
pricing (Homburg, Workman, and Krohmer 1999). Beyond
differences in job duties, marketers and salespeople can also
differ in terms of customer versus product perspectives and
short- versus long-term orientations (Homburg and Jensen
2007). Such complexity, uniqueness, and interdependency
between functions make investigating SMJTs critically
important.
Research on intraorganizational forms of job transitions
encompasses a variety of mobility types, such as job rotations
(e.g., Ortega 2001), lateral moves (e.g., Feldman and Ng 2007),
and promotions (e.g., Kalleberg and Mastekaasa 2001). The
process of salespeople transitioning into marketing roles—a
specific context of intraorganizational mobility—can be un-
derstood, in part, through existing job transition frameworks.
Nicholson and West (1989) discuss a process model in which
employee transitions occur in four stages: (1) preparation
(expectations and anticipation occurring before the change), (2)
encounter (emotional impact and sense making occurring when
first starting the new job), (3) adjustment (personal development
occurring to better fit the requirements of the new job), and (4)
stabilization (steadiness being achieved between the employee
and the new role). Additional research has examined a variety of
job transition aspects, including socialization (e.g., Batistič and
Kaše 2015), employee retention (e.g., Verbruggen, Cooman,

© 2018, American Marketing Association Journal of Marketing

ISSN: 0022-2429 (print) Vol. 82 (July 2018), 32–48
1547-7185 (electronic) 32 DOI: 10.1509/jm.17.0279
and Vansteenkiste 2015), and career development (e.g.,
Campion, Cheraskin, and Stevens 1994). Furthermore, firms
can facilitate effective job transitions by providing training,
mentoring, and social support to transitioners (Kraimer et al.
2011; Moyle and Parkes 1999; Verbruggen, Cooman, and
Vansteenkiste 2015).
Effective job transitions can yield multiple benefits to or-
ganizations, and as such, their use should be strategically
considered by marketing, management, and human resources.
Intraorganizational mobility helps employees develop cross-
functional skills and an enhanced understanding of other firm
functions (Guenzi and Troilo 2006; Xie, Song, and Stringfellow
2003), and it can lead to increased individual and organization
capabilities (Nicholson and West 1989). Job transitions can also
improve employees’ job satisfaction (Kalleberg and Mastekaasa
2001) and organizational commitment (Anderson, Milkovich,
and Tsui 1981). Furthermore, job transitions can strengthen the
integration and cohesion of disparate functions in the firm
(Matthyssens and Johnston 2006). Finally, job transitions can be
an important part of corporate strategy, given the benefits they
may impart to employee development (Baruch and Peiperl
2000). However, some drawbacks are also associated with job
transitions. Personnel changes can be costly in terms of time lost
while employees learn their new roles (Campion, Cheraskin,
and Stevens 1994). Job transitions can also cause increased
stress in the workforce, due to the novelty of the change
(Nicholson and West 1989; Rudisill and Edwards 2002). Fi-
nally, the potential exists for job transitions to be mismanaged
and overused, leading to negative outcomes for the firm, such as
loss of functional identity and impaired performance (Rouziès
et al. 2005).
Despite the prevalence of SMJTs and the potential mag-
nitude of their impact, knowledge germane to these phenomena
is limited. Research has discussed job rotation, one form of
intraorganizational mobility, as a way to increase functional
collaboration between marketing and sales (Cespedes 1995).
Within the SMJT context, research has found that job rotation
reduces prejudices by providing insights into a variety of tasks
(Matthyssens and Johnston 2006). Extant conceptualizations
have discussed job rotation as an antecedent to outcomes such
as increased competencies, skills, and understanding between
counterparts (Guenzi and Troilo 2006; Matthyssens and
Johnston 2006) but fail to explore its process or the facilitators
of its efficacy.
Several gaps also exist in the understanding of job transi-
tions overall. Although research has advanced job transition
process model insights (Nicholson and West 1989), no studies
have assessed the comprehensiveness of this model, and
findings within model stages have been fragmented. In addition,
this process model begins at the preparation stage, providing
valuable opportunity to expand understanding of motivations
leading to job transitions as well as approaches for acquisition.
Moreover, opportunity exists to learn more about individual-
and organizational-level facilitators that may be essential to
efficacious transitions. Finally, job transition literature has fo-
cused relatively more on the benefits of transitions than on
providing a balanced perspective of commensurate drawbacks.
As such, we aim to answer the following research questions:
What is the nature of the job transition process model? What
motivates transition? What approaches do salespeople use to
acquire a job in marketing? How do transitioners prepare for
their new role? What challenges must transitioners cope with
after the transition has occurred? What role do individual- and
organizational-level factors play in facilitating job transitions?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of SMJTs to the orga-
nization? Answers to these questions can provide valuable
insights for employees as well as the sales, marketing, man-
agement, and human resource functions of the firm.
To answer these questions and provide an understanding of
the factors affecting job transition incidence and efficacy, we
examine intraorganizational mobility through SMJTs. Because
an exploration of SMJTs is novel to academic inquiry and
addresses a complex, nuanced issue, this topic is ideally suited
to a qualitative research design (Creswell 2007; Johnson
2015b). Through theoretically exhaustive in-depth interviews,
we advance insights into and propositions of the SMJT process,
facilitators of SMJTs, and positive and negative outcomes to the
organization. The findings from this research not only provide
insight into the marketing literature but also extend what is
known in the broader job transition literature in management
and other related areas, as many of the results are new across
domains.
Method
We engage in a multifirm, grounded theory design to gain
insights into SMJTs. Grounded theory helps researchers ad-
vance explanations, models, and theory of underexplored re-
search areas using the views of participants familiar with the
phenomena of interest (Corbin and Strauss 2008). Consistent
with other marketing articles investigating complex, novel
topics (e.g., Johnson and Sohi 2016; Ulaga and Reinartz 2011),
we use grounded theory to explore SMJTs.
Sample and Data Collection
To acquire the necessary data for our inquiry, we employed
theoretical sampling, a commonly used technique in marketing
research (e.g., Johnson and Boeing 2016; Tuli, Kohli, and
Bharadwaj 2007). In theoretical sampling, researchers select
participants knowledgeable in their topic of interest (Corbin and
Strauss 2008). Investigating SMJTs required a specific subset of
marketers—namely, those who had transitioned from an initial
sales role to a marketing role within the same company. We
recruited informants using a variety of contact mechanisms,
including postings on LinkedIn and local chapters of the
American Marketing Association, discussions with multiple
marketing advisory boards, solicitations of former MBA stu-
dents, and meetings with personal connections. In addition to
successful transitioners, we interviewed executives and “failed”
transitioners (i.e., those who did not remain in marketing, but
rather moved on to another function or company) from the same
companies as the “successful” transitioners to provide balance
to our inquiry.
We used a semistructured interview protocol to gain in-
formant insights through open-ended questions. We asked
several questions related to the SMJT experience and its fa-
cilitation and outcomes. Respondents shaped the flow of the
interviews by expounding on key areas of interest and expertise.
Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 33
We used probing questions to follow up on insights and en-
courage elaboration. The interviews occurred over the tele-
phone and in person and were all recorded for transcription and
analysis. We continued to interview respondents until we
achieved theoretical saturation—the point at which no new
insights or understandings are gleaned from the procurement of
additional data (Creswell 2007). We were able to obtain a
sample with substantial individual, organizational, and indus-
trial diversity to ensure robustness of the data (Creswell 2007).
Respondents came from organizations in a variety of industries,
including aeronautics, agricultural/food products, business
services, construction, entertainment, financial services, health
care, logistics, media, pharmaceuticals, publishing, telecom,
and transportation. Thirty-two of the interviews were with
successful transitioners (4.09 years’ experience in sales, 6.22
years’ experience in marketing; 37.5% female), 11 were with
failed transitioners (3.82 years’ experience in sales, 3.45 years’
experience in marketing, 5.91 years’ experience in other; 36.4%
female), and 13 were with executives (20.92 years’ experience;
38.5% female).
Data Analysis and Reliability
We analyzed the data by initially coding informants’ quotations
in descriptive, low-level codes based on their language used and
then subsequently classified all codes into higher-order cate-
gories (Corbin and Strauss 2008). For example, an informant’s
discussion of the desire to stay home more was initially coded
as such (i.e., stay home more), subsequently classified into
work–life balance, and then classified into its motivation
component of the model (for a coding structure visual depiction,
see Maitlis and Lawrence 2007, p. 65). We structured and coded
our data using the qualitative analysis software NVivo 11 in the
interest of comprehensive data treatment. After importing our
verbatim transcripts of informant interviews, we developed a
tree-node structure in NVivo, which allowed us to easily display
quotations by case and by code. This process enabled us to
assess the refutability of our findings by simultaneously ex-
amining data from multiple cases to determine whether any
systemic difference of contextual factors (e.g., industry, expe-
rience, gender) influenced the qualitative insights. Doing so also
allowed us to challenge our assumptions and analyses. While
overall the findings were quite consistent, we uncovered certain
codes that varied depending on experience, which we discuss in
the “Findings” section. We also performed member checks to
establish the validity of our findings (Corbin and Strauss 2008).
We gave our study results to informants, asking them to criti-
cally assess our interpretations and findings and to comment on
the veracity of our conclusions. Members provided positive
feedback regarding the accuracy and relevance of the findings.
We also reinterviewed many of the initial respondents in a
second wave of collection to obtain their relative assessments of
the advanced model’s components. Finally, we conducted an
interrater examination to further establish the reliability of our
coding. In line with extant qualitative examinations (Tuli, Kohli,
and Bharadwaj 2007, p. 3), we provided two independent judges
with the interview data to “verify the accuracy of the themes we
identified from the field data” germane to the SMJT process
from 30 randomly selected cases. We then assessed interrater
34 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
reliability using the proportional reduction in loss approach
advanced by Rust and Cooil (1994). The resulting proportional
reduction in loss for our examination was .93, which exceeds the
threshold recommended for qualitative examinations (Rust and
Cooil 1994).
Findings
The findings reveal many new insights relevant to intra-
organizational transitions from sales to marketing roles, as well
as broadly to job transitions overall, regardless of firm function.
Figure 1 shows novel insights germane to the SMJT process, the
facilitators affecting the efficacy of SMJTs, and SMJTs’ or-
ganizational outcomes—both positive and negative. We focus
on the findings that are novel to the job transition literature
overall, thus informing the SMJT context while also providing
valuable insights for management, human resources, and the
wider base of theory related to job transitions as a whole.
SMJT Process
Respondents provided clarity on how the SMJT process un-
folds. Specifically, they identified six facets of transition in the
SMJT process: motivation, acquisition, preparation, encounter,
adjustment, and stabilization. Many interesting and novel ele-
ments and themes were provided for transition motivation, ac-
quisition, preparation, and encounter. However, respondents’
comments on the final two stages provided largely generic in-
sights reinforcing existing research on how employees develop
and achieve stability over time, and thus, we do not discuss them
further. Overall, in addition to informing the SMJT context,
process findings provide valuable extensions to job transition
insights generalizable beyond marketing (e.g., operations tran-
sitioning to marketing, finance transitioning to strategic planning).
SMJT Motivation
Respondents reported that they transitioned from sales to
marketing for many reasons, including implicit expectations,
marketing power, work–life balance, strategic involvement,
organizational altruism, and educational application. These
reasons varied from extrinsic (e.g., work–life balance) to in-
trinsic (e.g., educational application) motivations. Respondents
also noted some motivations already advanced in the broader
job transition literature (e.g., career development, obtaining new
skills and experiences); however, we focus on the more novel
motivations.
Extrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations for SMJTs
refer to the external or instrumental reasons respondents made
the change to marketing. For example, some respondents noted
that they were motivated to make the SMJT because doing so
was an implicit expectation in the organization. Organizations
have many written and unwritten rules for expected behavior,
especially regarding career advancement. As a senior business
manager for a transportation company noted, his organization
had an unwritten policy about the necessity of an SMJT for
employees wanting to advance their careers:
I think it’s implicit from the time you hire into the organization
[when] they lay out the org chart [that SMJT] is encouraged….
You need to have a diverse background which includes both a
 FIGURE 1
SMJT Model

SMJT Process
Motivation Encounter
Intrinsic Acquisition Preparation Loss of Gain of
Extrinsic
• Implicit • Strategic Foci Broad Targeted Benefits Challenges
expectation involvement • Read • Probe • Compensation • Pressure
• Sales
• Marketing • Organizational texts current • Freedom • Job ambiguity
achievement
power altruism • Take marketers • Customer • Exposure to
• Educational • Strategy interaction company
• Work–life courses • Data
application • Analytical • Excitement politics
balance diving

SMJT Facilitators and Outcomes

Individual-Level Facilitators
Traits Actions
• Marketing mind-set • Proactive feedback solicitation
• Team orientation • Information gathering Organizational Outcomes
• Inside sales • Outsourcing Benefits Drawbacks
experience • Superior marketing • Overreactive
strategies marketing
• Improved strategic • Suboptimal pricing
Organizational-Level Facilitators implementation • Loss of customer
• Reduced sales– relationships
Demographic Instructional Cultural
marketing tension • Misallocation of
• Organizational • Marketing • SMJT
• Aspirational goal for human resources
age academy openness
salespeople
• Product • Embedded • Role formality
differentiation cross-training • Customer
• Services vs. integration
goods

marketing role and a field sales role…. That seems to be the
perspective that you get from most folks, especially people that
are within high-level leadership positions.
In addition, respondents noted that the level of marketing
power affected their motivation to make the transition. In some
organizations, sales holds the power, as it is directly responsible
for bringing revenue into the firm. In others, marketing is
considered more strategic and important than sales and, thus,
more powerful. As a marketing director in the publishing in-
dustry reflected, marketing power can incentivize salespeople to
make the transition:
If you’re in a sales position where it’s seen as marketing has
more of the power, it would seem like more of a progression
or a promotion, I would think, or just taking on more re-
sponsibility to move to the position where you have the power.
Another reason salespeople made the move to marketing
was for work–life balance. While sales roles can provide job
flexibility, they also may require significant travel and time
away from family. Marketing, however, is generally more of a
headquarters-based position. A senior business manager in the
transportation industry was motivated to make the SMJT be-
cause of work–life balance considerations:
A big part of the marketing job benefit for me is sort of a little
bit personal in the sense that I was getting my MBA at the same
time, and I could stay home more, and I had a six-month-old
baby…. A lot of the sales jobs back then were really out in the
field.
Intrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivations for SMJT
entail respondents making the change to marketing for self-
actualizing or altruistic reasons. Respondents were motivated to
make the SMJT for the strategic involvement it provided. Some
respondents felt too tactical in their sales role and thus desired a
more involved, strategic role in marketing. A senior vice
president in the telecom industry noted that he finds partici-
pating in his organization’s strategic decisions exciting:
It’s personal for me with respect to being involved in strategic
direction of not only where the company is headed, but why
it’s heading there and then how we’re going to get there…. It’s
that ability to participate in vision, strategy, what the orga-
nization’s doing … that excite[s] me.
Furthermore, some respondents were motivated to make the
SMJT out of organizational altruism. These respondents clas-
sified their marketing departments as underperforming and
unresponsive; however, rather than being deterred by this poor

Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 35

performance, they saw an opportunity to help the organization
by improving the marketing department. A marketing program
manager at a logistics brokerage realized she could make a
positive impact on a subpar marketing department:
I reached out to [marketing], and they gave me kind of our
standard presentation, which was [dated]…. I ended up re-
doing the entire thing myself and putting it into a different
format…. That’s when I thought that maybe I should be in
marketing, and not so much in sales.
Finally, some respondents were motivated to make the
transition for the educational application of what they had
learned while earning their degree in marketing. Some sales
roles are devoid of traditional marketing activities, and sales-
people who have obtained a marketing degree may want to
employ this learning in their jobs. A product manager at a
medical devices company noted that she enjoyed her marketing
education, valued what she had learned, and wanted to apply her
education through a marketing role:
Definitely being able to use my education more. So, like I said,
I took those classes for a reason, and I was really excited to use
all the things that I’ve learned to … update the website or
[send] out mass emails and stuff like that [and] … embrace my
marketing education.
Relative motivation proposition. In our second wave of
interviews, we asked respondents to reflect on the types of
motivators that prompted the SMJT and to assess which
had a stronger impact on the decision. Of the two primary
types of motivators, most respondents indicated that in-
trinsic motivations had a greater impact on prompting the
transition than extrinsic motivations. They noted that be-
cause SMJTs may entail certain decreased extrinsic factors
(i.e., less money), intrinsic factors are more important in
prompting the transition. A senior vice president in a tel-
ecom company discussed that extrinsic (lower-order) mo-
tivations are not usually the focal point; rather, more
salespeople make the transition out of intrinsic (higher-
order) motivations:
It would be the higher-order things in terms of personal growth
and the ability to participate in where the organization is
headed and help the business mature. Those lower-end things
aren’t why most people make that transition. They’re doing it
for the opportunity to transform a business, to change a
business, to grow a business.
P1: Intrinsic motivations prompt SMJTs to a greater extent than
extrinsic motivations.
SMJT Acquisition
Respondents recognized that their intraorganizational acquisi-
tion of the marketing role varied drastically from their sales
position acquisition. They advanced different foci in their in-
terviews for the marketing position. Specifically, they employed
sales achievement, strategy, and analytical foci to acquire their
marketing roles.
Sales achievement focus. Salespeople transitioning to
marketing roles have an advantage over applicants from outside
the organization because they are a known entity. By employing
a sales achievement focus (highlighting their success within the
organization in the sales role), salespeople aimed to positively
36 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
position themselves to hiring managers in marketing. Sales
achievement is especially valuable because it is germane to and
verifiable within the organization, as opposed to experience an
external candidate may have obtained. A senior brand manager
in the publishing industry noted that having sales achievement
data allowed her to illustrate her accomplishments and convince
the hiring manager she was the best person for the job:
I think a big thing that I was able to do, having the sales
experience, is to be able to have actual performance data, to be
able to say, “This is my territory, this is the growth that I
achieved.” Just having metrics that I was able to refer to, it’s a
big thing. What’s your record, and do you have a record that
you can point to?
Strategy focus. Respondents also noted the need to include
a strategy focus in which they communicate their ability to
see the big picture for the organization. A vice president of
marketing in the security services industry recognized that
the attributes he highlighted in acquiring his sales role were
less relevant to his acquisition of the marketing role, so in-
stead he emphasized his ability to strategize and capitalize on
opportunities in the market:
I have a different approach when I interviewed for sales jobs
[than] when I interviewed for marketing jobs…. When I
interviewed for the marketing roles, it’s all about strategy. It’s
all about looking into the marketplace, solving problems,
identifying the gaps in the market.
Analytical focus. In addition, transitioners used an ana-
lytical focus to highlight their ability to make logical, data-
driven decisions in the marketing job acquisition process. Many
marketing jobs require advanced analytical capabilities. A se-
nior business manager in a transportation firm incorporated this
focus into his interview by highlighting the analytical experi-
ences he engaged in as part of his sales role:
My responses in that interview were more analytically driven
because I know that that’s what the focus of those jobs were,
and so I had to try to demonstrate that from the sales expe-
riences that I had. Probably a little bit more deep-dive than I
normally would have done.
Relative acquisition propositions. Our transitioners and
executives revealed consistencies and differences in the
mechanisms salespeople use to transition to a marketing role
based on the experience level of the transitioner. Most deemed a
sales achievement focus as least effective in increasing the
likelihood of a salesperson being hired for a marketing role.
Respondents also noted that achievement in sales differs from
that in marketing (i.e., high-performing salespeople may not
necessarily make the best marketers), and thus, this focus may
be less desirable. For early-career salespeople, it is most im-
portant to show hiring managers that they possess the necessary
abilities to make informed, data-based decisions in their mar-
keting role. Early-career marketing jobs often require direct
application of analytical skills, and thus this skill is prized to a
greater extent. In addition, early-career transitioners may not
possess enough strategic experience to highlight in interviews.
Later-career salespeople often want to transition to higher-level
marketing jobs, and focusing on their strategic ability is more
persuasive in interviews. These transitioners may not engage in
ground-level analytics but, rather, set the strategic direction for
their teams. A senior human resources director in the trans-
portation industry noted how a salesperson’s focus should vary
depending on tenure:
For younger salespeople, I’d probably take the analytical
approach. You know, for that immediate transition over,
analytical is the skillset that’s required. If you’re making the
transition at a higher level, like a director level or executive
level, then absolutely strategy.
P2: An analytical focus increases the likelihood of SMJT acqui-
sition for early-career salespeople.
P3: A strategy focus increases the likelihood of SMJT acquisition
for later-career salespeople.
SMJT Preparation
Respondents noted the criticality of the period between their
notification of acquiring the marketing role and their actual
transition date into the role. Respondents indicated the need
for soon-to-be transitioners to prepare themselves to make
the jump. Respondents advanced two primary ways of pre-
paring for their transition into marketing: broad and targeted
preparation.
Broad preparation. Transitioning salespeople recognized
that their marketing role would be quite different from their sales
role and tried to prepare for the move by gaining general
marketing information. Some respondents attempted to aug-
ment their marketing knowledge base by reading current
marketing texts. A marketing program manager in the logistics
brokerage industry noted that she read marketing books ex-
tensively to help her transition:
I actually bought a bunch of books about marketing and about
brands and about that kind of stuff, and I tried to self-educate as
much as I could. I tried to absorb as much as I could. Before
my transition, I just really tried to read. I just kind of looked
everywhere I could to learn.
Another way transitioners increased their broad-based
knowledge of marketing was by taking marketing courses.
Some salespeople come into organizations with majors other
than marketing and thus have never received any formal
marketing education. Others recognize that the marketing
profession is highly dynamic and that current courses can sup-
plement their understanding. A vice president of marketing in the
printing industry discussed how he would have his transitioners
take a “crash course” in marketing at a local university:
There were some classes that people would go to. I used to
have my product managers go to the University of [state].
They used to have a product management class. Even when I
started, I actually went and did this too; we have people go do
that.
Targeted preparation. Some respondents took a different
approach, focusing more on ways to increase their knowledge in
areas specific to the job. One such means of gathering this
specific knowledge was to probe current marketers. Some soon-
to-be transitioners realized that a great deal of insight could be
obtained before their transition by engaging current marketers
within their organization. A senior brand manager in a pub-
lishing organization recalled her interactions with future
colleagues:
I had phone calls with other members of the team that I was
going to be on, just learning from them, their thoughts and their
experiences of the products and markets. Just trying to learn as
much as I could from them before I actually got back and
started doing the job.
Another focused manner of learning in which transitioning
salespeople engaged was data diving specific to their impending
marketing role. Respondents noted that organizations often had
analytic systems they could access. Transitioners capitalized on
this resource by working to understand the nature of their
specific market before the transition. A market analyst in the
transportation industry used this approach to improve his un-
derstanding of his market:
We have some analytics tools at [company] that let us grab
data in terms of customer shipments by certain business
segments and things like that…. I remember going into
[software program] and pulling some data to see what the
business looked like. There was a little bit of legwork I did in
advance to know and understand about things.
Relative preparation proposition. When asked to pro-
vide an evaluation on which form of preparation—broad or
targeted—was the superior approach in preparing themselves
for a marketing role, some respondents indicated that a broad
approach was the optimal route. These respondents believed
that having a better-rounded, deeper understanding of mar-
keting was more valuable in making the transition than was
specific, focused knowledge that could be obtained after the
transition had been made. However, most respondents believed
that a targeted approach was better, as such preparation provides
more immediately relevant content to help in their new role. A
senior vice president in a telecom company explained the
relative value of targeted (focused) versus broad preparation:
I would definitely say focused…. You can read the textbook,
but you need to understand the specifics of how the company
does marketing and what the role is within marketing, because
it changes based on the company. I mean reading books will
help, but not nearly as much.
P4: Targeted preparation helps salespeople prepare for their
transition to marketing to a greater extent than broad
preparation.
SMJT Encounter
Respondents noted that their SMJT came with some challenges.
After their transition, these newly minted marketers needed to
acclimate to their new job reality. Respondents spoke about two
primary types of issues they needed to deal with in their new
marketing role: the loss of certain benefits associated with their
former sales role and the gain of new challenges arising from
their new marketing role.
Loss of benefits. While sales roles are not without their
challenges, they also possess certain benefits that may be absent
in marketing roles. Salespeople had to come to terms with the
loss of these benefits in their new marketing role, such as
decreased compensation. Salespeople are often compensated
through commission, and their earnings can exceed those of
their marketing counterparts. A marketing director at a com-
puter software firm noted that his level and control of pay
diminished when making the transition to marketing:
Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 37
 With commission and everything else, usually sales [people]
within an organization are going to reap the highest salaries.
So, in terms of thinking about a ceiling, at least with this
organization, my ceiling was probably lowered going to
marketing over sales.
Salespeople also dealt with decreased freedom associated
with the new marketing role. Sales positions often come with
high levels of flexibility in which salespeople can set their own
schedules. Furthermore, when field salespeople transition to
marketing, they may be required to work at headquarters. A
senior business manager in the transportation industry noted
how transitioning to marketing reduced the freedom of his job:
You’re back in the headquarters, you’re back in what we call
the “glass palace,” you are under the microscope at all times.
You lose freedom of being out in the field sales position. You
are kind of under the thumb of executive management back in
headquarters.
Respondents also needed to adjust to decreased customer
interaction in their marketing roles. Salespeople have extensive
interactions with customers and frequently engage in many
social activities with them. In moving to marketing, however,
they often lose this contact and these activities. A senior director
of integrated marketing in the broadcasting industry lamented
the loss of these job attributes:
I miss the hospitality aspect of it, the wining and dining clients,
and the lunches, and all of that, because there’s a lot more of
that on the sales side than on the marketing side, so I miss that.
I do miss interacting with clients, because right now my role,
I’m very internally facing.
Finally, some respondents found decreased excitement in
their marketing roles as compared with their sales roles. In
marketing, projects can be long-term in nature, with the results
of actions taken being somewhat opaque. By contrast, sales-
people have more immediate and direct exposure to success or
failure. A vice president of global innovation in a construction
products organization noted that sales offers more excitement
than marketing:
How can I put it, the emotions of working in a marketing role
were much more middle of the grass, whereas in sales the
highs are higher, and the lows are lower. There wasn’t kind
of the thrill of the hunt that when you close the big account,
or you were able to take share away from a competitor at a
big account, that really felt great. There just [weren’t] those
opportunities.
Gain of challenges. In addition to coming to terms with
their lost benefits, transitioners needed to deal with new
challenges in their marketing role. For example, salespeople
may find increased pressure associated with the marketing role.
Marketing places additional challenges on the plate of the
transitioner, which can be quite daunting. A senior business
manager in the transportation industry noted that he knew the
expected duties before joining marketing, but he did not an-
ticipate the significant increase in collective pressure:
The marketing jobs are a little bit more challenging, they’re
more of a meat-grinder, and all of the people coming from the
field, myself included, the challenge can be pretty extreme…. I
didn’t realize how much pressure can actually be in some of
38 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
these positions…. The task was a lot more intense than I
originally probably anticipated.
Another new challenge for transitioned salespeople was the
increased job ambiguity that came from moving to marketing.
Sales roles often have relatively clearer goals and means for
achieving those goals than marketing. A marketing director in
the print media industry recognized this disparity between roles,
with the marketing role being more ambiguous:
Sales was a little bit more defined. It was like, “Here’s your
sales objective, here are the things you’re going to sell, here’s
your territory.” It was more, I don’t want to say black and
white, but it was more defined versus marketing. [Marketing]
was much more ambiguous.
Exposure to increased company politics was another hurdle
in the SMJT process. The remote nature of sales roles often
insulates salespeople from the politicking that may occur at
headquarters. However, after making the transition to mar-
keting, exposure to organizational politics increases dramati-
cally. A general manager in the printing industry noted how this
occurred in his transition:
I would say you’re closer to the internal crap. You start seeing
the political animals. You start seeing the different ways that
people conduct themselves within an organization. You really
don’t see it as much when you’re out there in a remote field
situation.
Relative encounter propositions. The relative weighting
of the difficulty of encounter factors (i.e., loss of benefits or gain
of challenges) was contingent on the respondents’ duration of
employment in the sales role. Long-tenured salespeople had
often become fully entrenched in their sales role and accus-
tomed to its many benefits. It was difficult for these people to
give up the perks of the sales role. As a marketing manager in
the agricultural industry noted, the loss of freedom from his
former sales role was the most salient challenge he encountered:
Honestly, the hardest part was moving into a structured office
every day…. I came from working out of my house as a sales
guy. So, my day was kind of my day. [When] moving into a
structured office … it took me a good eight months to get used
to that environment again.
Early-career salespeople, however, had less time to become
accustomed to the benefits of the sales role and entrenched in
their perspectives, so they were less affected by the loss of these
benefits. However, because these respondents were less
established in the organization than their senior colleagues and
wanted to make positive organizational impressions, they were
very much affected by the gain of new challenges associated
with their new roles in marketing. A senior marketing manager
in the publishing industry explained:
The new challenges. The loss of benefits is real for sure, but I
feel like that loss of benefit piece, while that is an adjustment, I
knew going in 100% what those things were. I mean, the
challenges piece is harder to anticipate because you can’t really
know until you know.
P5: The gain of new challenges associated with the new marketing
role is more difficult to cope with than the loss of benefits
associated with the former sales role for early-career tran-
sitioning salespeople.
 P6: The loss of benefits associated with the former sales role is
more difficult to cope with than the gain of new challenges
associated with the new marketing role for later-career tran-
sitioning salespeople.
Facilitators and Outcomes of SMJTs
All salespeople encountered challenges in their transition to
marketing. However, certain factors espoused by respondents
made the transition more efficacious. Respondents reported
many different facilitators of SMJT efficacy on both individual
and organizational levels.
Individual-Level Facilitators
Respondents advanced certain individual-level factors that can
affect the efficacy with which salespeople transition into
marketing. These factors came in two varieties according to
respondents: who the transitioners already are (traits) and what
the transitioners do after the transition (actions).
Traits. Respondents identified several trait factors (i.e.,
more stable, enduring orientations and characteristics) af-
fecting the efficacy with which salespeople make the tran-
sition to marketing. For example, successful transitioners
need to have a marketing mindset. Passionate marketers
see the world differently from the rest of the population.
Transitioners possessing a marketing mindset instinctually
think about marketing as part of their daily lives. A vice
president of marketing in the aeronautics industry noted the
importance of a transitioner’s propensity to view the world
through a marketing lens:
It’s not natural for everyone to look at things from a marketing
mindset. Some of us walk into a restaurant and simply take it
for what it’s worth. Others of us will walk into a restaurant and
say, “If they would just do these things a little different.” It’s
that creative, strategic, almost intuitiveness that a person might
have and legitimately says, “I’m wearing a marketing hat.”
Successful transitioners also need to possess a team ori-
entation. Sales positions can be individually focused, making
team emphasis less critical. However, as a marketer, possessing
a team orientation is important. Marketing roles are often
marked by a significant number of team-based projects. A
senior brand manager in a publishing company noted that some
salespeople find working on a team challenging; however, to
effectively make the transition, they need to successfully work
with many other internal stakeholders:
Being a sales rep is a very isolated job…. You are responsible
for doing everything that you need to do. A lot of times in
marketing, it’s much more of a team-based job.... You have to
collaborate, be able to work on a team. For some people in
sales, that’s very challenging.
The type of sales experience the transitioners possessed also
had an impact on the efficacy of the transition. Specifically,
those with inside sales experience had an advantage over those
with field sales experience. Inside sales experience gave tran-
sitioners direct access and exposure to marketers with whom
they are now working. A product manager in a medical devices
firm noted how such experience allowed her to accrue more
knowledge because she did not need to engage in mediated
communication but, rather, could ask questions directly:
Being on inside sales, I was at [headquarters] where outside
sales reps usually aren’t. Because I was able to walk down the
hall and talk to the product manager and ask them a technical
question where an outside sales rep has to pick up the phone
and try [to] get a hold of that person or send an email. I think
that made a huge difference, at least for me.
Actions. Respondents also noted that action-based factors
(i.e., more transient activities) affected the efficacy with which
salespeople transitioned to marketing. For example, transi-
tioners who practiced proactive feedback solicitation were able
to increase the efficacy of their SMJT. Former salespeople may
be unsure of their performance given the different nature of the
marketing role. As such, soliciting performance feedback can
help them identify both strengths and opportunities for im-
provement more expeditiously. A marketing specialist at a
logistics brokerage proactively scheduled meetings with his
boss to make sure he stayed on course and corrected any
deficiencies:
I took it upon myself to set up something where [I] and my
direct boss meet once a month…. I wanted to make sure I was
getting feedback…. That was all self-generated. By setting up
that meeting with my boss, she basically had an every four-
week way of telling me, “Hey, you’re doing good at this stuff.
We need to get you there on this stuff.”
Respondents also noted that extensive information gath-
ering facilitated efficacious SMJTs. Transitioners undergo a
necessary learning curve before they match the knowledge of
their peer marketers. The gathering of information from their
peers can help them get up to speed more quickly. A sales and
marketing leader in an agricultural products organization was
relentless about asking his peers about how they acquired
relevant market information. Doing so helped him build rele-
vant knowledge stores more rapidly than if he had attempted to
learn everything on his own:
I just started asking questions…. When I hear about a trend in
our industry that I wasn’t aware of, I’m like, “Well how can
you know that?” and then they’d show me in the report. I
[found] three people I could really trust and say, “I don’t know
this stuff, could you help me?”
Another action respondents discussed in facilitating the
SMJT was outsourcing of certain tasks in the new role. Del-
egating key tasks at which the transitioner does not excel was an
important attribute noted for separating effective from in-
effective SMJTs. The new marketing role may contain elements
that involve both strengths and weaknesses of the transitioner.
Outsourcing certain activities can prevent transitioners from
becoming mired in their limitations. A business director in an
agricultural products company was highly skilled in marketing
communications but was not a good copywriter. Instead of
wasting his valuable time on this activity, he outsourced the
activity to free himself up for tasks at which he could excel:
I think I’m a great marketing person and a very good mar-
keting communications person but I’m not an excellent writer.
I’m a bad copywriter, so I had to learn very quickly either I can
spend hours doing crappy copy or I can invest some time, get a
network of either in-house or third-party people that I can go
Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 39
 to. I can manage some of these things that, yes, on paper I can
do it, but I can’t do everything, so some things you outsource.
Relative individual-level facilitator proposition. While
both traits of and actions by transitioners can affect the efficacy
of the SMJT, respondents indicated that traits are more im-
portant. Respondents discussed that the makeup of the transi-
tioner is the key component to a successful transition. Marketing
roles often require certain abilities that may diverge from those
necessary to perform in a sales role. As such, regardless of what
actions they may take, if transitioners are ill-suited for their new
job, they are unlikely to perform at a high level in the new role.
A vice president at a print media firm described this notion:
I think it comes down to the foundation, and the biggest
predictor of success is who you are. Then you can optimize
your performance based on feedback loops and your actions.
P7: Transitioner traits are a better predictor of transition efficacy
than transitioner actions.
Organizational-Level Facilitators
Organizational factors also have the potential to increase the
efficacy with which salespeople transition to marketing. Some
of these facilitators are outside the organization’s control,
whereas others are directly controllable. Cognizance of de-
mographic, instructional, and cultural factors can help firms aid
salespeople in effectively making the move to marketing.
Demographic factors. Respondents noted several de-
mographic factors about firms that affect people’s efficacy of
transitioning into marketing roles. One such factor is the or-
ganizational age of the firm. As organizations evolve, institu-
tional knowledge accrues among their members. A component
of this knowledge is how to effectively transition employees
across various roles, including salespeople to marketing roles. A
marketing manager in a telecom company noted that older
companies are better suited for helping people transition be-
cause of their increased experience with the task:
You need one of those old [companies] that have been around
forever, and they’ve accumulated enough resources … re-
quired to train the workforce [for] transitions that are recurring
within the workplace, and really assisting people on their
journey from point A to point B within the company. I think
older companies are able to do that more effectively.
The organization’s products can also affect transition ef-
ficacy depending on their degree of product differentiation.
Specifically, when a firm’s products are highly differentiated,
SMJTs are likely to be more effective because the salespeople
making these transitions bring deeper understanding of the
products’ value propositions and how customers perceive them.
A director of sales and marketing in the building materials
industry noted that salespeople’s continual delivery of the value
proposition for differentiated products helps them be more
effective in their marketing role:
I think when you have situations where it is an active value-
based sales process, that salesperson, a successful sales-
person, will make a better marketer because they have to
truly understand and communicate the value proposition.
In a commodity-type product, that salesperson is not going
to have that same set of skills.
40 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
Another product trait that affects the efficacy of SMJTs was
whether the firm’s core products were primarily services or
goods. The inseparability and intangibility of services make
sales experience more vital to marketers. Whereas new mar-
keters without sales experience may be better able to understand
and market goods sold by their firms, services may require
increased understanding of customer needs and wants. As a
director of marketing in a facilities services company noted,
services have more complicated value propositions for which
sales experience benefits the marketer:
I would say, particularly in a service industry, I think [SMJT] is
relevant. Consumer packaged goods for example—do you
really need to know how to sell them to market them? Probably
not, because I think that you can develop familiarity just by
using the product…. But in the service industry you have to. I
think it’s much more complicated.
Instructional factors. The respondents also noted many
facilitators that organizations can directly control through their
provision of learning opportunities. One important consider-
ation for firms is to provide transitioners with a marketing
academy. Firms may erroneously assume that salespeople can
seamlessly transition to marketing roles without proper training,
as they already have experience with the firm and its products.
However, the marketing role can vary drastically from the sales
role and require specific training for the transitioner to be most
effective. Whereas other job transition examinations have
discussed training, our respondents discussed a highly formal,
academy-like structure. An executive marketing director in a
pharmaceutical firm has a formal marketing academy that
transitioners attend to ensure that they are properly schooled and
know how to market within the organization:
It’s called [company name] Marketing Academy.... It’s kind
of a schooling, if you will, on marketing and inner workings.
You’re educated and learn everything about marketing and all
different facets. That’s what they do to prepare you on that
side.
Firms can also improve their SMJTs by using embedded
marketing cross-training with their salespeople. Participating in
traditional marketing functions (e.g., strategy making, pricing,
promotional content) not only helps salespeople gain new
perspectives and understanding but also increases SMJT effi-
cacy. More exposure to marketing activities allows salespeople
to increase their marketing familiarity, so that when the tran-
sition occurs, they already know many elements of the mar-
keting role. A general manager in the printing industry indicated
that because he was heavily involved with marketing in his field
sales role, he came into his marketing role with a good grasp of
what he needed to do to be effective:
I was involved with marketing even when I was in the field. I
was involved in quite a bit of test marketing, and I was in-
volved in new product development counsels, sales counsels
that were focused on some of the things that marketing was
doing. Yeah, I was definitely not coming in blind. I definitely
had a sound understanding of what I was getting into.
Cultural factors. Cultural elements within organizations
can also facilitate SMJTs. One such element is SMJT openness.
While SMJTs were uncommon in some organizations, other
firms displayed widespread cultural acceptance, and even
expectation, of this practice. Under an open culture to SMJTs,
which in turn creates a critical mass of transitioned employees,
subsequent transitioners were better able to learn and integrate
into their new marketing role. A marketing program manager
in a logistics brokerage noted that cultural negativity can occur
in the transition if there are not others who have previously
made the same transition, whereas SMJT openness lends to a
supportive environment:
I would say, it all depends on the organization culture as far as
how many previous salespeople are in the marketing group,
because you don’t want to end up in a situation where there is a
marketing group of no previous salespeople from that orga-
nization, and someone transfers over, because there is going to
be some culture shock there.
Another cultural aspect respondents indicated as a facilitator
of the SMJT is the role formality of the marketing position.
Marketing positions vary in their level of formality, with some
being highly structured and regimented and others unstructured
and open. The activities and goals of a marketing position can be
relatively opaque in comparison with a sales position. An as-
sistant vice president in the transportation industry noted that
firms with highly structured marketing roles facilitate the SMJT:
A structured marketing role helps. For a salesperson that is
going into a marketing role for the first time, I think that
structure would be important for that person to understand the
path.... I mean I can tell ten different people what a marketing
job is, but how they actually approach and do that job may be
ten different ways, and some may be on the path and some may
be off.
Firms also varied in the degree of customer integration they
employed to create a “culture of the customer” in their mar-
keting departments. Some firms had a strong customer-focused
culture and required that marketers directly call on at least one
customer in their marketplace. In addition to facilitating a reality
check for subsequent marketing actions, this requirement
provided the transitioning salespeople an aspect of the new job
with which they were already familiar. As a vice president of
continuous improvement in the transportation industry noted,
this customer-integrated culture provides comfort to transi-
tioning salespeople:
Marketers had to [directly] own one customer in their mar-
ketplace.… And so, that gave you somewhat of a kind of a
calming point moving over [to marketing].
Relative organizational-level facilitator proposition.
Respondents noted that the impact of demographic, in-
structional, and cultural factors on transition efficacy differs and
that cultural factors are the most important in facilitating the
transition. In some organizational cultures, transitioners were
encouraged, supported, and welcomed into their new roles with
open arms, providing an environment conducive to transition.
These factors had a marked impact on their transition. However,
respondents noted that some cultures were instead unconducive,
hostile, and negative toward transitioners, thus drastically
inhibiting transitioners in their new role. A marketing
agronomist in the agriculture industry identified the hier-
archy of impact as cultural, instructional, and demographic
factors:
The biggest driver of those three is cultural. Looking at an
organization and fitting into a marketing department that al-
ready had some balance in [it], and so ... it was not a culture
shock to jump in. Then instructional would be behind that.
Demographics would be the least effective of those three from
my experiences.
P8: Cultural factors affect the efficacy with which the SMJT occurs
to a greater extent than instructional or demographic factors.
Outcomes of SMJTs
Respondents provided many positive outcomes associated with
SMJTs that have already been discussed in the job transition
literature, including employee development and learning, new
insights and perspectives in roles, understanding of the rela-
tionships with other firm functions, employee satisfaction and
commitment, and improved collaboration between functional
areas. Similarly, they discussed known drawbacks of SMJTs,
such as increased cost to the organization and higher stress for
employees. However, as we discuss in the following subsec-
tions, respondents also noted several benefits and drawbacks of
transitions that were novel to the literature.
Benefits of SMJTs. Developing effective strategies for the
marketplace is a perennial challenge for marketers. Accord-
ingly, firms are always searching for ways to improve the
quality of their marketing strategies. Respondents noted that a
key result of firms embracing SMJTs is superior marketing
strategies. As an assistant vice president of strategic planning in
the transportation industry indicated, transitioners are better able
to deliver strong products and marketing content given their
enhanced understanding of customer needs:
Having a customer perspective makes people more effective
marketers. It gives you better products and better services,
[improves] how you serve your external market. Really, the
better you understand the customer, [the better you are] able to
tailor your products and approaches to those needs. And the
better you understand your markets, the more effective you
are.
Another way SMJTs benefit the organization is through
improved strategic implementation. Organizations that support
SMJTs have a better understanding of salesperson needs during
implementation as transitioners have lived the sales experience.
In turn, these marketers have more credibility in the eyes of
salespeople. A marketing manager in the publishing industry
discussed how, as a marketer, her sales experience allowed her
to better convince salespeople about the value of implementing
her strategies:
I think you can bring more to the table if you do have that sales
experience because you can relate [more] to your previous
experience. For example, I’ve sent out a marketing campaign
based on what I experienced when I was in sales. I think that
being able to do that gives you a lot of credibility…. I feel like I
have an easier time communicating with [salespeople].
In addition, SMJTs can reduce tension between sales and
marketing. Sales and marketing do not always get along well or
engage in constructive interactions. Instead, tension and hos-
tility can arise between functional members. Respondents noted
that SMJTs help firms alleviate this strain. As a president in a
Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 41
transportation company noted, SMJTs helped improve the
relationship between sales and marketing:
I think [SMJT] reduces tension. I think when you have people
rotating in and out more frequently, it helps reduce that
tension.
Respondents also noted that SMJTs can serve as an aspi-
rational goal in the organization. In contrast with a siloed sales
and marketing organization in which salespeople are limited in
their ability to move across functions, organizations with a clear
SMJT pathway can encourage enhanced performance from
their salespeople. Salespeople may appreciate the develop-
mental flexibility SMJTs provide and increase their effort level
in their role in the hopes of achieving the transition. As a
marketing agronomist in the agriculture industry noted, SMJTs
exert a positive influence on the performance and motivation of
salespeople in the organization:
A lot of times, entry-level positions are sales positions, where
you get college grads or people that are learning the system
come in as a sales opportunity. As they work their way through
the company, [SMJT] gives them something to look forward
to once [they] gain that sales experience to become more
involved in the marketing side of it. You’re hiring from within,
which gives drive to very competitive people, as opposed to
just hiring from without.
Drawbacks of SMJTs. While SMJTs confer benefits to
organizations, they also have potentially deleterious in-
fluences. Respondents noted that sales experience could
result in overreactive marketing. Salespeople tend to have a
shorter-term perspective of their role, which can be bene-
ficial in sales. However, this perspective in transitioned
marketers can result in a “react first, think second” mentality
in the marketing department. As a marketing manager in the
music industry noted, SMJTs can have a negative impact
because of this issue:
There is a potential to defer too much to that kind of anecdotal
news-of-the-day kind of model. When the organization is so
incredibly sales-driven, there is a tendency sometimes to react
and not be as mindful about the bigger picture stuff, so that is
the danger I think that you have.
Another potential pitfall of SMJTs is suboptimal pricing.
While a transitioned salesperson’s level of customer under-
standing and empathy can be beneficial in the marketing role,
it can be a double-edged sword. Specifically, the customer
perspective–taking ability transitioned marketers possess from
their time interacting with customer in the sales role may result
in instances in which they take the customer’s feedback on
pricing over what the market would dictate. As a vice president
of marketing in an aeronautics company noted, marketers’ sales
experience can lead them to unnecessarily back off of price
increases:
The cons are that you have empathy toward the customer. I am
just saying that you have the perspective of not being one-
sided. Like a 10% price increase on a line. If the market says
that it could support it but the customer does not want to do it, I
could see how a [transitioned] marketing person might be
willing to go, “Hey, you know what, I understand, let’s sort of
split the difference and go 5% or 6%.” If that marketing person
42 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
maybe didn’t have that experience in the sales role, they could
just be hell-bent on getting that 10%, as that’s what the
numbers say.
Another downside of SMJTs is the loss of customer re-
lationships. When the sales force is the primary conduit for
hiring marketers, the turnover rate in sales positions can increase
substantially. As a result, the customer knowledge accrued by
the salesperson dissipates. The loss of the customer relationship
can adversely affect the organization through reduced sales and
customer satisfaction. A vice president of marketing in the
printing industry discussed how SMJTs may affect customer
relationships and organizational performance:
You get those deep relationships and now, all of a sudden, I
pluck you out of sales and I bring you into marketing, you have
all of that great customer knowledge, and now I got to put
somebody new out there. That hurts those long-term re-
lationships and that can negatively affect your sales as a
company. It can blow up those relationships.
Finally, when organizations explicitly or implicitly en-
courage SMJTs, a misallocation of human resources can result.
High-performing salespeople who would better serve the
company by remaining in sales may move to marketing because
they view doing so as essential to advancing their careers. This
action depletes the sales force of a high-performer and can result
in lost revenue and increased costs in hiring and training to the
firm. Furthermore, the transitioner may be poorly suited to the
marketing role and hurt company performance in this manner
as well. As a vice president of continuous improvement in a
transportation company noted:
The drawback would be if you force naturally inclined
salespeople and put them behind the scenes in marketing, do
you hurt the company? There are some people that in their
heart only want to be a salesperson. If only in your heart you
want to be a salesperson, but I tell you [that] you have to be a
marketing person, you might not arrive with the same passion
for the company. Maybe you could provide the greatest value
to us as an ongoing hunter.
Relative SMJT benefits and drawbacks proposition.
Respondents carefully considered the pros and cons that
SMJTs bring to the organization. Factors such as improved
marketing strategies and strategic implementation were noted as
important; however, considerations such as adverse human
resources ramifications weighed on respondents’ assessments
as well. Overall, respondents believed that the positive aspects
of SMJTs outweigh the drawbacks. The knowledge, experi-
ence, perspective, and skills that sales-transitioned people
possess make them better marketers overall. Thus, SMJTs are
beneficial, insofar as organizations with better marketers can
realize superior performance in the marketplace. As a product
manager in the medical industry noted, SMJTs provide the
organization positive value:
I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons. I think from a
relationship perspective, you have more respect from the sales
rep[s] and you get more engagement from them. I feel like the
pros are definitely higher than the cons.
P9: The benefits of SMJTs outweigh the drawbacks; thus, SMJTs
improve organizational performance.
 TABLE 1
Prior Research and Contributions of the Current Study
Prior Research Current Study

Job transition process Conceptualized as a four-stage process of
preparation, encounter, adjustment, and
stabilization (Nicholson and West 1989).
Motivation Understood broadly as a function of factors such
as career stage, control seeking, organizational
mandate, and personal growth/novelty needs
(e.g., Anderson, Milkovich, and Tsui 1981;
Campion, Cheraskin, and Stevens 1994; Cron
1984; Feldman and Ng 2007; Nicholson 1984;
Verbruggen, Cooman, and Vansteenkiste 2015).
Acquisition Enabled through factors such as past position
quantity and type, functional background, and
early-career stage (e.g., Brüderl, Diekmann, and
Preisendörfer 1991; Forbes 1987).
Preparation Conceived as general socialization into a new
organization or as a passive process in which the
transitioner sets internal expectancies for the
impending transition (e.g., Batistič and Kaše
2015; Morrison 1993; Nicholson 1987).
Encounter Conceptualized as initial coping and sense
making by the transitioner to transition-related
stressors, demands, and uncertainty (e.g., Latack
1984; Louis 1980; Moyle and Parkes 1999).
Facilitators Focused largely on organizational facilitators
such as training, mentoring, and social support
(e.g., Kraimer et al. 2011; Moyle and Parkes 1999;
Verbruggen, Cooman, and Vansteenkiste 2015).
Outcomes Focused largely on the positives of job transitions
such as satisfaction, commitment, collaboration,
and development (e.g., Anderson, Milkovich, and
Tsui 1981; Baruch and Peiperl 2000; Campion,
Cheraskin, and Stevens 1994; Guenzi and Troilo
2006; Kalleberg and Mastekaasa 2001;
Matthyssens and Johnston 2006; Ortega 2001),
with less emphasis on negatives such as
increased cost, stress, and perceptions of
inequity (e.g., Burke and Moore 2000; Rouziès
et al. 2005; Rudisill and Edwards 2002).
Advances two additional job transition process
categories that improve understanding of the job
transition process: transition motivation and
acquisition.
Provides two macro categories through which
transition motivation manifests: intrinsic and
extrinsic. The components of these categories are
also novel to job transition research.
Reveals the importance of three foci potential
transitioners employ to successfully obtain the
transition position in the SMJT context: sales
achievement, strategy, and analytical.
Provides two active forms of learning transitioners
engage in to prepare themselves for their
upcoming move: broad and targeted.
Delineates two primary categories of difficulty for
initial transitioners with which the transitioner
must contend: loss of benefits from the former role
and gain of challenges from the new role.
Provides specific insight into SMJTs.
Specifies many individual-level facilitators
comprised of transitioner traits and actions. Also
provides myriad organizational-level facilitators
along demographic, instructional, and cultural
lines. Some facilitators apply to job transitions
overall, while others are specific to the SMJT
context.
Advances a balanced perspective of both novel
benefits to SMJTs and potential dark sides of
SMJTs. Some outcomes are specific to the SMJT
context, while others can be extrapolated to other
job transition contexts.

Discussion framework, presenting findings from prior research alongside

This article explores the common reality of job transitions and,
specifically, intraorganizational mobility through SMJTs. We
extend a conceptual framework of the SMJT process, identify
factors facilitating transitions, and delineate outcomes (both
benefits and drawbacks) to organizations. The findings add
theoretical insight to the marketing and broader job transition
literature domains. We next discuss the theoretical contributions
to job transitions overall and to the SMJT context in particular,
as well as managerial implications, limitations, and future
research avenues. Table 1 summarizes each component of the
contributions from the current study.
Theoretical Contributions
Prior research on job transitions has advanced a process model
for understanding the transition process through the stages of
preparation, encounter, adjustment, and stabilization (Nicholson
and West 1989). Building on this model, we demonstrate that
the framework should be extended to also consider moti-
vational factors prompting job transitions and the acquisition
strategies used to secure the new role. Understanding

Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 43

motivational aspects of the job transition process is an im-
portant component, considering that while certain job transi-
tions are compulsory, others are not (e.g., Eriksson and Ortega
2006). Thus, it is important to recognize and delineate the
factors that motivate employees to initiate the job transition
process. Furthermore, many job transitions must be compet-
itively obtained (Ng et al. 2005; Rosenbaum 1984). Extant
literature has focused largely on trait factors germane to
employees’ ability to acquire a new job, such as prior positions,
background, and career stages (Brüderl, Diekmann, and
Preisendörfer 1991; Forbes 1987). Our findings add to this
knowledge by providing valuable insights into the mecha-
nisms employees use to successfully secure their transition.
Our research also contributes to these novel and existing job
transition process categories by revealing thematic groups of
variables affecting the process. Research has often conceptu-
alized motivation as a function of intrinsic and extrinsic factors
(e.g., Miao, Evans, and Zou 2007). Our findings explicate how
these motivational elements extend to job transitions. In ad-
dition, while previous research recognizes the importance of
preparation in job transitions, it mostly conceptualizes prepa-
ration as either general socialization into a new organization
(Batistič and Kaše 2015; Morrison 1993) or a passive process in
which the transitioner sets internal expectations for the transition
(Nicholson 1987; Nicholson and West 1989). Our findings
advance two active forms of pretransition learning—broad and
targeted—that transitioners use to prepare themselves for their
impending change. Furthermore, transitions can be difficult and
put strain on the transitioning party (Verbruggen, Cooman, and
Vansteenkiste 2015). Current perspectives in the encounter
stage focus on the strains employees confront in the new job,
such as stressors, demands, and uncertainty (Latack 1984; Louis
1980; Moyle and Parkes 1999). Our findings show that in
addition to the challenges from the new role that transitioners
must contend with, they cope with the loss of benefits from their
former role. These thematic classifications can be generalized
across functional areas and provide utility to researchers when
conceptualizing other types of job transitions. For example,
transitions from sales to finance or from marketing to human
resources would still involve both loss of benefits and gain of
challenges within the encounter phase; however, the specific
benefits and challenges would likely change given the different
transition contexts.
In addition, we collected a second wave of data from re-
spondents to provide propositional guidance on the relative
impact of each of these categories on their stage within the job
transition process. With these insights, we propose that tran-
sition motivation comprises more intrinsic than extrinsic factors.
As SMJTs can at times have decreased extrinsic factors (i.e.,
less earning potential in the new role), the intrinsic factors prove
more salient in motivating the transition. This finding adds to
extant research examining salespeople’s intrinsic and extrinsic
motivations (e.g., Miao, Evans, and Zou 2007) and provides
insight into which factors are most critical. We also propose that
targeted preparation helps transitioners to a greater extent than
broad preparation. This finding is in line with tangential liter-
ature germane to interorganizational job transitions show-
ing that employees new to organizations try to learn from their
peers to socially integrate into the company (Morrison 1993).
44 / Journal of Marketing, July 2018
We build on this concept by applying peer socialization to an
intraorganizational mobility context that requires attaining role-
specific information rather than general socialization and, im-
portantly, that occurs before the transition. Furthermore, in our
assessment of refutability—questioning assumptions related to
our analysis and exploring whether systemic differences in our
respondents influence the findings—we discovered experience-
based nuances for acquisition and encounter and thus contribute
to career stages literature in marketing (e.g., Cron and Slocum
1986). For acquisition, the most efficacious mechanism was an
analytical focus for early-career salespeople to obtain the job.
However, for later-career salespeople, a strategic focus was
superior. As members progress through the organizational
hierarchy, a big-picture vision becomes increasingly more
important than specific, tactical application (Mumford, Cam-
pion, and Morgeson 2007). Finally, the nature of the difficulty
salespeople experience after making the transition also differed
as a function of their tenure in the sales role. Early-career
salespeople found it more difficult to deal with the added
challenges of the new role, while later-career salespeople found
the loss of benefits a more significant issue. The longer a person
experiences a benefit, the more difficult it is to have it removed,
and early-career organizational members value external ap-
praisals of their performance to a greater extent than later-career
members (Johnston and Marshall 2013).
We provide additional contributions with the lower-level
codes shown in Figure 1. Some codes provide insights into job
transitions overall as well as marketing, while others are mar-
keting specific. In particular, motivational factors such as or-
ganizational altruism may motivate job transitions in myriad
other contexts, such as transitioning from finance to strategic
planning or supply chain to operations. However, factors such as
marketing power, work–life balance, strategic involvement, and
marketing educational application are specific to marketing. For
example, the overall job transition literature conceptualizes
work–life balance in an adverse manner, as transitions can be
taxing, potentially requiring additional work from the transitioner
(Verbruggen, Cooman, and Vansteenkiste 2015). However,
given that the sales role can also require long and late hours as
well as heavy travel (Johnston and Marshall 2013), work–life
balance was perceived as a motivator in the SMJT context.
Furthermore, the encounter elements are highly specific to
the SMJT context. Compensation decrease is common in
SMJTs but rare in voluntary job transitions in other contexts.
Similarly, excitement represents a positive aspect of tran-
sitioning in the broader job transition literature given the ex-
posure to new experiences and skills (Xie, Song, and
Stringfellow 2003). However, in the SMJT context, salespeople
miss the “thrill of the hunt” associated with closing a sale. The
loss of interacting with customers that occurs in the SMJT is also
specific, as is the gain of challenges from the new role, as job
ambiguity and pressure may or may not increase with other
forms of job transitions as they do in the SMJT context. Finally,
the exposure to company politics a salesperson experiences
when transitioning from a field role to the home office is a drastic
change that does not exist in an intraheadquarters job transition.
As Table 1 shows, the literature has advanced certain factors
as facilitators of job transition efficacy. Training, mentoring, and
social support all affect an organizational member’s ability to
effectively transition jobs (Kraimer et al. 2011; Moyle and
Parkes 1999; Verbruggen, Cooman, and Vansteenkiste 2015).
Our research contributes to theory by identifying additional
individual- and organizational-level facilitators that affect job
transition efficacy. Furthermore, we provide thematic catego-
rization of the facilitators that is generalizable across job
transition contexts (i.e., transitioning between functional areas
other than sales and marketing). For individual facilitators,
enduring traits and transient actions both affect the efficacy of
job transitions. Respondents’ relative assessment, however, was
that traits have a greater impact on job transition efficacy than
actions. Respondents noted that the similarity of the transitioned
job greatly affects the relative impact of traits versus actions.
When employees transition into a job that requires substantively
different abilities and orientations (e.g., SMJTs), their individual
traits are more predictive of success. These findings add to
research asserting the value of trait factors in career success
(Judge et al. 1999). For organizational facilitators, demographic,
instructional, and cultural factors all have an impact on the
efficacy with which the transition is made. Of these three
factors, respondents noted that cultural factors are the most
important in ensuring an effective transition. Cultural re-
ceptivity of new members is a critical component of successful
adaptation and integration into the organization (Batistič and
Kaše 2015), and factors such as openness and cultural fit shape
the transition experience.
The lower-level components of the facilitators also contain
both generalizable and SMJT-specific elements. For example, at
the individual level, the actions of proactive feedback solicita-
tion, information gathering, and outsourcing apply to the broader
job transitions domain in addition to the SMJT context. How-
ever, the traits of marketing mindset and inside sales experience
contribute solely to the SMJT context. For organizational-level
facilitators, factors such as organizational age, embedded cross-
training, and role formality may hold across transition contexts.
However, factors such as level of product differentiation, services
versus goods, and customer integration are SMJT specific. In
addition, we provide nuanced understanding in the SMJT
context of aspects noted previously in the literature, such as
training. Given the magnitude and frequency of SMJTs, training
in this context may be more formalized and stable than in other,
less commonly occurring job transition contexts.
As Table 1 also shows, prior research has discussed ben-
efits associated with job transitions, including collaboration
(e.g., Guenzi and Troilo 2006), competencies and skills (e.g.,
Campion, Cheraskin, and Stevens 1994), job satisfaction (e.g.,
Kalleberg and Mastekaasa 2001), and organizational commit-
ment (e.g., Anderson, Milkovich, and Tsui 1981), as well as
drawbacks in the form of stress (e.g., Rudisill and Edwards
2002), cost (e.g., Campion, Cheraskin, and Stevens 1994), and
perceived inequity (e.g., Burke and Moore 2000). However,
there is a relative imbalance, with more focus on the pros than
the cons. Although our respondents indicated that the positives
of SMJTs outweigh the negatives, they expressed a com-
mensurate number of potential pitfalls of transitioning. As such,
our results provide a balanced perspective of this phenomenon
to the literature.
The lower-level outcomes provide many marketing-specific
contributions in our exploration of SMJTs. The sales and
marketing functions may be fraught with tension that strains
their relationship and results in a dysfunctional interface
(Malshe, Johnson, and Viio 2017). Respondents revealed that
SMJTs can reduce tension and thus improve this critical in-
terface within the organization, in part because of transitioners’
enhanced ability to understand and communicate with sales-
people. In addition, motivating salespeople is a key concern in
sales management (Miao, Evans, and Zou 2007). As a form of
continued career progression, SMJT opportunities encourage
salespeople to increase their effort and thus can improve selling
performance for the organization. Furthermore, scholars have
noted the importance of the effective development and exe-
cution of marketing strategies in promoting optimal marketing
performance (Morgan 2012) and the impact of sales and
marketing on these desirable activities (Malshe and Sohi
2009a, b). Transitioners’ enhanced knowledge of customers and
other salespeople increases their ability to create high-potential
strategies and encourages their implementation by the sales
force.
Despite these many benefits, respondents also noted that
marketing organizations should be cognizant of the drawbacks
of SMJTs. Salespeople can possess more short-term thinking
and be tactical owing to their sales role (Homburg and Jensen
2007). These traits can transition with them to the marketing
role and result in overreactive marketing in which the marketing
function acts rashly on idiosyncratic information. In addition,
salespeople’s desire to please their customers may make them
prone to sacrifice margins in the sales role (Dolan and Simon
1996), which can also transfer with them to their marketing role
in the form of suboptimal pricing. Furthermore, long-term re-
lationships between salespeople and customers are vital to
organizations (Friend and Johnson 2014), and SMJTs can
have a disruptive influence on these relationships. Finally,
salespeople may differ from marketers on key characteristics,
abilities, and orientations that originally attracted them to the
sales role (Homburg and Jensen 2007; Homburg, Jensen, and
Krohmer 2008). Implicitly or explicitly requiring SMJTs could
result in a top-performing salesperson transitioning into a
mediocre marketer, depleting the sales force and weakening the
marketing function at the same time.
Managerial Implications
In addition to extending theory, the findings are particularly
relevant to managers, as they provide valuable guidance for
how managers can strategically utilize, position, and guide
human resources within their firm. Furthermore, improving the
development and implementation of marketing strategies, re-
ducing the tension between marketing and sales, and increasing
salesperson motivation are common managerial goals. Our
results reveal that managers can use SMJTs to reach these goals.
However, our results also reveal that these benefits can come
with a price—namely, overreactive marketing, suboptimalpricing,
loss of customer relationships, and misallocation of human re-
sources. As such, it is imperative for managers to know how
to optimize SMJTs to help maximize the benefits and minimize
the drawbacks. Our results provide guidance to these ends.
Proper selection is critical to ensuring that the right sales-
person is chosen to make the transition to marketing, as
Sales-to-Marketing Job Transitions / 45
respondents noted that not all salespeople are a correct fit for the
marketing role. As such, hiring managers can assess individual
factors such as marketing mindset in the interview process by
having salesperson applicants answer marketing-scenario
questions and team orientation by having them explain how
they have contributed to teams in the past. Hiring managers can
also assess whether the potential transitioner is likely to engage
in transition-facilitating activities, such as proactive feedback
solicitation and information gathering, by evaluating the quality
of the applicant’s questions to the interview team.
Beyond proper selection, managers can also increase effi-
cacy by providing a supportive culture and necessary instruc-
tional support to the transitioned salesperson. Cultural aspects of
the organization such as openness to internal mobility and
establishing roles that are culturally conducive to transition
should be encouraged to enable successful transitions. More-
over, managers should be cognizant of the difficulties sales-
people experience in the encounter phase of the transition and
help ameliorate these issues as much as possible. Later-career
salespeople will need more help overcoming potential losses in
compensation, freedom, customer interaction, and excitement,
whereas early-career salespeople will need more help over-
coming challenges resulting from increased pressure, job am-
biguity, and company politics. Finally, managers can encourage
targeted preparation to soon-to-be transitioned employees by
encouraging open communication with current marketers and
providing easy access to relevant company data.
Limitations and Future Research Opportunities
Considering the limited research investigating SMJTs, a
grounded theory approach was ideal for the discovery-oriented
investigation of this topic. This type of exploratory, qualitative
research is vital for expanding understanding of an underrep-
resented phenomenon and from this work, several potential
future research opportunities using quantitative methods exist,
such as statistically testing the conceptual model provided
(Johnson 2015a). For example, researchers could test the
propositions advanced to understand the relative impact of
factors in the transition process as well as the individual- and
organizational-level facilitators to determine the degree to
which they increase transition efficacy and marketing per-
formance. Furthermore, the lower-level components of the
various categories could be assessed empirically. For example,
researchers could test which of the transition-associated losses
affects transitioning salespeople to the greatest extent. In
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