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Finance InformationDon't Shoot the Sales Team
by:
Steve Chriest
Revenue is down. Sales are slowing. The CEO looks up from the business plan and realizes that the institution won’t meet analysts’ expectations. Focusing on the organization’s sales leader, the stage is set for sacrificing a scapegoat.
Upon who else should the axe fall once
the sales organization misses revenue targets? After all, aren’t sales and revenue the responsibility of the sales leader? The answer may be as easily forgotten as it is obvious.
To one degree or another everyone in an organization impacts the revenue generating process. The strategic plan of the board of directors and the CEO provides the overall strategy for revenue generation. The marketing department provides crucial demographic and psychographic consumer
or client information on which the sales department relies in formulating industry and account strategies. Manufacturing, finance, legal, consumer
service and all different departments facilitate or constrain the process of generating revenue, each in their own peculiar way.
The sales organization’s influence in enterprise revenue generation is con-centrated in the sales pipeline. Characteristic bona fide sales opportunities, managing those opportunities through the sales pipeline until they produce revenue, and then managing consumer
or client relationships are the primary responsibilities of the sales and sales management teams. Rarely, if ever, makes the sales organization control the resources of manufacturing, marketing, finance, legal and consumer
service.
The image most companies present to the earth show the sales organization “out there,” in front of customers and clients and in front of the rest of the company’s departments. Even as marketing, the 1st cousin-german of sales, is much often than not as disconnected from sales as are the different departments. The sales group leads the institution charge, and the different departments take up rear keep positions, providing tangible and intangible support.
Revenue generation is a cross functional, company-wide process that involves every department and all employees in the organization. The CEO and the Board of Directors set corporate strategy and everyone else in the organization executes that strategy. We have ne'er
determined a situation wherever
the sales organization is in disarray patch all the different business segments are humming on
with little or no friction. In those rare cases wherever
the failure or underperformance of an enterprise’s revenue generation process lies inside
the sales organization, the appropriate sales executives, managers and sales professionals should be command
responsible
and should suffer the requisite consequences. Before CEO’s shoot their sales teams, however, they power want to take a critical look at the entire revenue generation process and how each business segment contributes to or detracts from the success of the process. Like America’s favorite psychologist, Dr. Phil, would-be advise: Every department in an organization either contributes to the company’s revenue generation process or contaminates it.
Just about the author:
Just about the Author:
Steve Chriest is the founder of Commerce Up™, a sales consulting firm specializing in sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of industries. He is as well the author of Executive Focus, a book that details a plan and methodology for attractive
with senior executives.
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