Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling

Frank V. Cespedes

Book | 2014

Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling

Abstract

There are many books that provide strategy advice and selling methodologies. But there is a gap in the management literature when it comes to linking sales efforts with strategy. Part 1 of this book provides data indicating how and why sales remain (by far) the biggest part of strategy implementation in most firms, the issues involved in linking selling investments with strategic goals, and a framework for analyzing the relevant processes. Part 2 discusses strategic choices, what research tells us about selling effectiveness, and how to translate a strategy into customer-selection and sales-call criteria. Part 3 focuses on core sales management issues: account management practices, hiring and development, compensation and incentives, performance reviews, and measuring sales effectiveness. Part 4 examines broader organizational requirements for effective selling and strategy implementation: developing sales managers who can manage and improving coordination between sales and other functions.

Keywords: Sales; strategy; Strategy; Sales;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Purchase

Citation:

Cespedes, Frank V. Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

Sales methodologies play an important role. A common approach in a sales force allows for consistency, dissemination of best practices, acceleration of learning, and it helps the firm to scale because management then has common metrics to monitor and evaluate. However, it’s rare that the same methodology is relevant across the buying situations encountered by salespeople in a market. This article discusses and provides examples of variables relevant to analyzing sales tasks and evaluating the relevance of a selling methodology: differences within an industry, within a category, and when target buyers change.

Common advice in sales is to provide insights to customers during sales calls. But this advice generally stays at the level of “tell people something they don’t already know” and results in sales conversations littered with many irrelevant factoids. This article provides examples of how salespeople develop and deliver resonant insights in customer conversations and why the framing of insights depends upon to whom they are talking and when in the sales cycle.

Most research and training in sales focus on acquiring new customers. But winning back previous customers is increasingly important: mergers, choice in supply chains, and uncertainty about trade wars mean that B2B customers are constantly re-evaluating relationships with suppliers and making changes. Meanwhile, large buyers account, on average, for over 25% of revenues at publicly traded firms, up from 10% in the 1980s. This article discusses how and why the process for reacquiring lost customers requires a different approach than acquiring new ones and illustrates the process and its implications via a case example.

Faculty & Research

Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors That Drive Effective Selling

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author