On Sales and Strategy Implementation

When implementing a new strategy, there is one element that all too often is not receiving as much attention as it should: sales. Not only is sales a vital part of any business, it is also one which is in the ideal spot to influence where a business is going. We'll discuss this more below - but first, a caveat. For the purposes of this article, by sales we mean the people whose responsibility it is to ensure that sales actually happens - that contracts are being signed, orders made, etc. Customer service and marketing in particular have vital, important and often under-appreciated roles in making sales happen - but unless those people have a direct responsibility for making sure that the customer signs on the dotted line, they are not who we are talking about here.

Sales and Strategy

While making money should not be the mission of a business, sales, revenues and cashflow are literally the lifeblood. All those lofty values and life-enhancing purposes that businesses often have are worth nothing if it cannot operate: a business must receive a steady stream of money with which to pay for salaries, employee benefits, real estate, technology being used as well as a plethora of other expenses. Only a business in which this works to a sensible degree can actually fulfil their worthy societal goals, be it related to circular economy, people's wellbeing, new experiences and learning or something else. Make no mistake, this higher purpose is vital for a successful company for many reasons - but no business survives on goodwill alone.

Strategy is where these loftier goals meet the financial constraints of how a business operates. There are many ways to devise an overall business strategy, but what is common to all of them is that they describe some sort of a roadmap or an overarching method to make reality meet the business goals. A strategy lives or dies depending on whether it can facilitate finding and fulfilling the needs of customers that will pay for a company to enacts its purpose in society at large. Towards this end, a good strategy should give clarity to several things vital for running a business, such as planning, skills development, resourcing and business environment. Every one of these elements also influence how sales is done, and what it needs to perform well.

The Actual Value of Money

Businesses, then, are run by their cashflow. This means that if a strategy you are planning is a meaningful one, sooner or later it should also be visible in the reasons your customers choose to give you their money. A strategy that calls for a new product or service?or a new way to interact with your customers, the impact will be a fast one: your customers will be the first to witness it. If it involves increasing innovation or streamlining operations, the visibility to the customers will be more subtle and apparent in the longer term as changes in your organisation become visible, and start impacting buying decisions. Overall, there are two things to keep in mind when thinking of sales and strategy:

• Whether a strategy works is, in the end, decided by your customers. Salespeople are best positioned to understand how the strategy is likely to fly, and if there are any amendments that are needed. If you want to enact real change, that change should also be seen in the way you deliver to your customers - and in order to utilise this, you will need the support of people in sales.
• People in a business tend to do things that their customers pay them to do (as far as customer deliverables go, anyway). This depends how the sale has been made - what the customer expectations are, what the contract details are and what is being taken for granted. If your sales people don't attempt to sell new product, it the strategy will fail, since the skills and processes needed to deliver it also become moot. If they don't use the impact of improved internal operation in how they sell, those improved ways of working will sooner or later become useless.

Culture and Brand Perception

In the large scheme of things, your company culture influences what is possible and what is unlikely to happen. If your strategy, or the requirements it places on how people work, is one your people are unlikely to get behind, even the most motivated and enlightened sales department will not create a success out of your strategy: customer promises will still need to be kept, and goods or services delivered. In order to get things going, you need a culture that is ideally supportive of the new direction, and at the very least not actively at odds with it.

Unless your business culture is supportive of your strategy implementation and your sales approach, your brand perception will suffer. The damage will vary depending on how large the gap between what you are pushing your company trying to do and what it is actually capable of, but chances are damage is long term. As long as you have human beings in your payroll, culture is the bedrock of anything your are trying to do.

Sales as a Strategy Enabler

Strategic changes and sales are inexorably linked - and influenced by both your culture and the perception of your brand. What do you need to do in order to make it work, then? The following three items are perhaps the first to start with.

1. Make absolutely sure that your salespeople are well aware of what is expected of them in light of your new strategy, and ideally involve them in creating it. When it is time to launch, make sure you have it down to sufficient detail to cover the most likely new questions, comments and angles that mights surface from the customers, and make sure you have a constant line of feedback and communication between your management team and the people in sales, especially in the early days of implementation. If there are needs to fine tune your strategy fast, you will hear it first from them - and if more guidance is needed, it is vital that you hear it directly and can deliver it promptly.
2. Cultivate a culture where change is appreciated and which can support your sales the right way by supporting the right kind of brand experience. Measuring the real culture, including the negative aspects of it, is both feasible and possible, and important to do if you want to lead your organisation the right way; the best way to do this is through letting people openly describe what is important for them and what they don't like, and analysing the feedback.
3. Make the new sales approach as easy as possible for your salespeople to act on. Let's face it - when there is a lot of pressure to succeed, most of us end up doing what we safely know we can do instead of trying a something completely new. Using the right tools and technologies, it is possible to gather data from both existing and prospective customers to gauge how likely they are interested in what your new strategy offers, and to prompt your sales people to contact them. Afterall, talking to a verifiably warm lead is, much more pleasant and likely to succeed than to a cold one, and people in sales know this.

All in all, your sales people can be either a great enabler to implementing strategy - or they can be the most certain way to scuttle your ship. All it depends on how you recognise their role, and help them get onboard: communicate with them constantly, cultivate a culture of support and trust, and support them with the data they need.