Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart

Frank V. Cespedes

Article | AFP Exchange (Association for Finance Professionals)

Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart

Abstract

Senior finance managers now operate in an altered c-suite landscape. The executives reporting to the CEO have doubled in the past 30 years, mostly an increase in functional specialists, not general managers responsible for cross-functional integration. Three decades ago, COOs outnumbered CFOs in Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, but the proportions have flipped. Many CFOs are now charged with driving strategic planning in their firms and, in this role, often serve as the glue across functions and business units. But without clarity about strategy and the ability to articulate strategy, people can only pick up random, disconnected cues about priorities, and alignment is then hit-and-miss, especially when it comes to linking sales behaviors with strategic priorities. This article explains core links between selling initiatives and basic drivers of enterprise value, and it provides suggestions about how best to communicate strategy to busy people in the field.

Keywords: Sales; strategy; Strategy; Sales;

Format: Print

Citation:

Cespedes, Frank V. "Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart." AFP Exchange (Association for Finance Professionals) 35, no. 2 (March 2015): 49–51.

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.

Fred Shilmover and Sam Clemens prepared for their fourth quarter board meeting. They were excited to have scaled their software startup, InsightSquared, to $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, they disagreed on the path ahead, specifically on the sales and marketing plan. Shilmover preferred a sales-centric approach to growth while Clemens preferred a marketing-centric one. Which strategy was optimal for their venture’s next phase of growth?

Faculty & Research

Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author