My late father, Ed Theis, used to tell me, “I’m proud of you. Remember, you still have a long way to go.” Sales and business alignment is an ongoing process. Successes and failures occur along the way. Working to build a self-correcting alignment system ensures long-term success.
Let’s look at the simple facts:
- Your company’s leadership decided to go into business to make money by selling something.
- There are companies or businesses out there that are potential clients; they need the something that you sell.
- Your marketing department identifies who is buying, and works to convince potential clients of the merits of something
- Your sales department talks to potential clients interested in that something, and converts interest into a sale.
- Your customer service department works to keep clients happy and to offer an additional something.
Is there such a thing as a self-correcting alignment system? What needs to happen for a business to stay aligned with the process?
- Willingness to adopt a program of ongoing improvement.
- Understanding of the relationship between sales, operations, revenues and profits.
- Creating a clear set of goals around these relationships in terms of throughput, inventory and operational expense.
- Defining and implementing tactics and metrics to track progress.
- Implementing tactics to meet the goals.
- Evaluating success (Ed Theis: I’m proud of you) and changing course based on a look at the results (Ed Theis: remember you still have a long way to go).
A plan/do/check/adjust approach like this is a self-correcting system. But it takes a special team of key people from sales, marketing, operations, and leadership to make the self-correcting system a success.
A self-appraisal approach are a great way focus on real issues with the right people to develop a set of goals and actions for near-term action. Interested in learning more about the self-appraisal approach? Call me at 317.502.7622.
