Making sure your company’s sales teams are aligned isn’t a task for the faint of heart. Even with the best alignment in the world, you will still have your teams that struggle to implement new tactics and processes. That’s why creating a sales alignment approach that works requires a structured approach. Sales leaders need to set goals, align competencies, ensure buy-in from across the company, and establish accountability throughout. With these elements in place, they can confidently start rolling out new tactics and processes that work.
1. Set Milestones for Your Alignment Process
Alignment is a process, not an event. Before you can begin implementing new alignment strategies, you have to establish your process. Without a defined process, you are just flailing without a plan. Your process should include the following key steps:
Engage your senior leadership – Even if you are the C-Suite of your company, no one is going to make it through your company’s walls. You have to engage the rest of your company in delivering the best results your company has to offer. As a sales leader, you need to start with your executive team.
Create a team process – Once you have senior leadership on board, you can start rolling out your sales alignment process to your team. Since sales leaders are often the ones implementing new processes, it can be helpful to create a process for them to follow. Use your team’s feedback to build the process, and take the lessons from other companies to refine the process as you go. As you build the process, be sure to have your team sign off on it. Not only does this ensure everyone is on the same page, but it also allows you to make amendments along the way as you see fit.
2. Define Your Goals
Once you have your process in place, you need to set your goals. The purpose of your goals will be to help you determine which areas you are weak in and where you can improve. Goals shouldn’t be set on a whim. Instead, you should use survey data to set your goals based on what your customers want and how they respond to your product. While it’s important to set goals based on your customers’ needs, you should also keep your own company in mind. Your goals should be ambitious but also achievable. You’re trying to set the stage for making sustainable, long-term growth. Here are some goals you may consider setting:
- Increase the number of leads per month by 10 percent
- This goal could be ambitious, but it could also be aspirational. It will help you determine your level of success.
- Increase the average deal size by 10 percent
- Another goal that helps you determine your level of success.
3. Align Your Team’s Competencies with Your Strategy
One of the keys to successful sales alignment is to ensure your team’s competencies align with your strategy. After all, you want your sales leaders to be able to sell your products, right? However, you also want them to do so in a way that aligns with your company’s long-term goals. At this point, you need to start digging into your company’s strategy and identify the competencies that would best support it. You could do this by asking yourself the following questions:
- What are our short-term goals for the next year?
- How can sales and marketing help us achieve our short-term goals?
- What are our longer-term goals?
- How can sales and marketing help us achieve our longer-term goals?
- How can we best deploy the right resources to support our strategy?
- Where might we need to add or subtract resources?
4. Set Clear Expectations for Success
When you’re creating your goals and aligning your team’s competencies, it’s also important to set clear expectations for success. When sales leaders set expectations, they should be clear on what they want to see happen. You should set expectations as if you are handing out grades. If you set expectations as if you are handing out candy, it will be much more difficult for your team to accept. Here, you should set expectations based on the following:
- What does success look like?
- How do you measure success?
- What metrics do you have to track?
- What are those metrics?
- What would the grade be?
- What is your plan for success?
- What are the steps for success?
- What are the checkpoints for success?
5. Establish a Transparent Accountability Loop
Sales leaders need to be accountable for their results. It is important to establish a transparent accountability loop within your process. If you don’t make this a key element of your process, you will not be able to sustain the results you are looking for. With a clear accountability loop in place, sales leaders can set expectations for their results and be held accountable for them. This accountability loop can be built into your sales alignment process, and you can use it to hold your team accountable for achieving results. Here are some ways you can use an accountability loop to hold your team accountable for results:
- Ask your team to sign a pledge that sets out their goals and expectations
- Allow them to set goals, measure them, and then hold them accountable by giving them a grade.
- Give your team a grade
- Back the grade up with metrics, and make certain you are tracking the metrics that will help you hold them accountable.
- Have your team report back to the CEO – Hold your team accountable by having them report back to the CEO and top leaders of the company.
Wrapping Up
In order to make sure your sales teams are aligned, you will need to implement a structured process. You also need to ensure your team’s competencies align with your strategy. It’s also important to set clear expectations for success and then establish a transparent accountability loop. With these elements in place, you can confidently start rolling out new tactics and processes that work.
