| Remember that sales professionals maintain customer | | | | make it personal-one customer at a time. Marketing |
| relationships; ultimately, products and services are what | | | | establishes the product or service position to |
| they sell. At times there is a natural tension between | | | | prospective customers, but specific features and |
| the sales organization and product or service delivery | | | | benefits that a specific customer values are what |
| because of complexities that arise in the sales cycle. | | | | make a sale. If a buyer doesn't value the product or |
| Sales teams focus on individual deals while operations | | | | service you offer, even if they are coaxed into a |
| and production have to manage budgets. It may even | | | | purchase they aren't going to make very good |
| seem that sales works at odds with the rest of the | | | | customers. |
| organization. In reality everyone has slightly different | | | | It would be unfair to fault sales, or product managers, |
| (although not conflicting) incentives. Ultimately sales, | | | | or marketing departments for any misalignment of |
| marketing, and operations all want to do the same | | | | incentives that occurs. Everyone in your firm may be |
| thing: good business and satisfied customers. | | | | committed to your mission, yet every person interprets |
| Alignment comes when sales and delivery extract the | | | | the mission and acts on it in his or her own way. Sales |
| benefit of one another's different, unique perspectives | | | | wish to close every deal. Consultants wish to be |
| to reincorporate customer-specific information into the | | | | generalists and reach "a market" as if the average of |
| firm's product and service offering. Ideally, a quality | | | | all customers were a real-life entity who magically |
| management system will use sales to gather market | | | | consumed their products and services. Marketing wish |
| sensing data, analyzing any sales losses in a post | | | | to reach brand new customers with exciting new |
| mortem meeting to debrief the product and service | | | | offers. Of course, when people hear things three or |
| teams on enhancements for the next iteration of | | | | four times it usually sinks in. Aligning sales and delivery |
| product offerings. | | | | is part of an overall quality process. It starts with |
| This is informative because it is up to marketing to | | | | executive management and is everyone's job every |
| target as many prospective buying segments as | | | | day. Stellar sales teams focus on customer relations, |
| possible. They create a "cloud of possible customers" | | | | empathetic product/service delivery, sale completion, |
| for sales to pursue. In effect, marketing creates and | | | | and customer satisfaction. In an organization where |
| average customer profile. The frustration for sales is | | | | they are properly supported and enabled, your sales |
| that no particular customer is the average of all | | | | team can be your greatest asset. |
| customers! Sales teams take this statistical cloud and | | | | |