Does a Technical or Product Marketing Background Make a Good Service Marketer?

Six months prior, Frank Akamura’s company, IT Utility Corp. (ITU), began offering its services to the airline industry. ITU now has a handful of clients. Frank learns from ITU’s vice president of sales that the time is right to dedicate a small sales team to focus on growing the business in the air transport segment. “Who on your marketing team can be assigned to support this new sales team?” asks the top sales person. “We’re short-handed right now. My only marketer is on maternity leave. The only other person is really a marketing communications person who puts together the literature we use to support our traditional service sales people,” replies Frank.