Journal of Marketing Research Vol. XLIII (November 2006), 564–579 564 © 2006, American Marketing Association ISSN: 0022-2437 (print), 1547-7193 (electronic) *Timothy M. Smith is Associate Professor of Corporate Environmental Management and Adjunct Professor of Marketing/Logistics Management, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota (e-mail: timsmith@umn.edu). Srinath Gopalakrishna is Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Missouri, Columbia (e-mail: srinath@missouri. edu). Rabikar Chatterjee is Professor of Marketing, Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh (e-mail: rabikar@katz.pitt.edu). The authors contributed equally to this article and thank the cooperating partner firm and the Forest Products Management Development Institute for their support of this research, as well as the contributions of Sergio Molina- Murillo in the development of the decision support tool. They also acknowledge the helpful comments from Leigh McAlister, special issue editor of the Marketing Science Institute Special Issue, and the three anonymous JMR reviewers. TIMOTHY M.SMITH, SRINATH GOPALAKRISHNA, and RABIKAR CHATTERJEE* The marketing and sales functions in many firms are often at odds despite their common goal of increasing revenue and profit. The finger pointing goes both ways: Marketing complains of poor lead follow-up by sales, and in turn, sales grumbles about the quality of leads generated by marketing. This disconnect can be damaging; high lead volumes generated through effective marketing campaigns could actually hurt downstream sales because of wasted effort on poorly qualified leads and/or delays in sales follow-up resulting from limited sales force capacity. To examine the revenue and profit implications of coordinated communications efforts at the marketing–sales interface, the authors develop a three-stage model that captures the effects of sequential marketing/sales communications on lead generation, appointment conversion, and sales closure. The results, which are based on a collaborative effort with a large home improvement retailer, suggest a complex interplay among marketing efforts (multiple media that generate leads), delays in follow-up (time lag between inquiry and sales force contact), and sales efficiencies (appointment and sales conversion). The findings underscore the impact of multimedia spending on the timing and effectiveness of subsequent communications, implying that improved internal collaboration between marketing and sales can offer significant upside potential for the firm. Finally, the authors develop a managerial decision support tool to simulate the impact of varying communications budgets, timing, and allocation on the marketing and sales planning system. A Three-Stage Model of Integrated Marketing Communications at the Marketing–Sales Interface The effective integration of various elements of the mar- keting communications mix is an important challenge for practitioners and academics alike. Corporations spend heav- ily trying to communicate with their current and prospective customers, often through multiple media. Although previ- ous research has examined the effectiveness of individual elements, such as advertising (Hanssens and Weitz 1980) and trade shows (Gopalakrishna and Lilien 1995), the syn- ergy across elements is also important; that is, spending on one source may enhance the effectiveness of another (Gatignon and Hanssens 1987; Gopalakrishna and Chatter- jee 1992). This perspective, called integrated marketing communications (IMC), has received some attention in the literature, though research in this area is scarce (Naik and Raman 2003). In practice, the impact of communications activity on the purchasing process is often sequential, especially when the process involves multiple stages. However, the timing of exposure to sequential communications is a key unexplored issue in the context of effective resource deployment. Our research stems from discussions with a major home improvement retailer, which we refer to as HIR for confi-