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

'The best sales book of the year'— strategy+business magazineThat gap between your company's sales efforts and strategy? It's real—and a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm's unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you're a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm's customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy. Most firms face a wide gap between their strategic goals and their sales and other go-to-market efforts. Aligning these activities is - or should be - an important component of competitive advantage for entrepreneurs and established companies. Yet for most, it isn't ... This book is about aligning strategy and go-to-market efforts. It starts by explaining why many sales problems in companies are really strategic alignment issues. It helps managers understand and diagnose both the overt and hidden costs of not aligning strategic goals with sales initiatives, and why getting better at selling typically requires more than a motivational speech, sales force reorganization, new incentives, or a good training seminar. It outlines a process for articulating strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and in ways that help strategy formulators understand the required sales tasks inherent in strategic plans for the enterprise. Given a coherent strategy, the book provides a framework for analyzing and managing the core levers available to firms when they seek to align selling behaviors with sales tasks, and examines each lever. Readers will learn how to synchronize strategy and sales activities across the organization, and get value from improving their firm's performance in the following areas: - How to move from a strategic vision to an integrated selling plan- How to build a sales organization to match strategy- How to create and maintain the optimal infrastructure and processes--Publisher's description. We have a problem. The dialogue that rarely happens ; Diagnosing the problem ; Fixing the problem -- Linking strategy and sales. The goal of strategy ; Making and articulating strategic choices ; Sales tasks and strategy -- Performance management. From sales tasks to selling behaviors ; People : hiring, development, and sales organization ; Control systems : sales compensation and incentives ; Sales force environment : performance reviews and measuring effectiveness -- Closing. Company environment : building human and organizational capabilities ; Making connections. Frank V. Cespedes. Includes bibliographical references. "The best sales book of the year" strategy+business magazine That gap between your companys sales efforts and strategy? Its realand a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book. In Aligning Strategy and Sales , Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution. With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firms unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether youre a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firms customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.