A term I will come back to over and over again is alignment.
A very popular business term is “silo” or to use a terrible cliche: “stay in your lane.”
But to have a successful business, you are going to need to break down some of the barriers to building relationships across business segments and take the silo thinking out of your organization.
Why?
Because if you have people and business lines that are pulling in their own unique directions, it is going to be tough to achieve the goals you need for your organization.
Why?
Well, if sales has goals that are defined by how quickly they can bring in money and that the number they need to bring in is the only important thing, it is tough to get them to focus on some of the long term, potential clients that will allow the business to go to the next level in its client base. The goals are out of alignment.
Or, lets say you have defined that your value is one thing and that your buyers are C-level executives, but your marketing and direction is aimed at an entirely different buyer profile, you aren’t going to get the results you are looking for.
That’s alignment.
So here are 3 keys that will help you build and maintain your proper alignment”
1. Be clear about the value you are creating:
This is a challenge for a lot of organizations. It can become quite easy for you to feel like you are doing one thing for your clients and that you are providing them one certain kind of value, but in truth, you aren’t…you are giving them a different value than you thought.
It could be they appreciate your perspective.
Or, it could be your way of framing issues.
Or, it could be something else.
But the first way to make sure you are operating with alignment is to understand and be clear about the real value that you provide to your clients.
2. Make sure your marketing and your sales are on the right page:
In a lot of organizations, this is one big silo that pops up.
Marketing is talking one way, sales is talking another…
And, guess what, neither one of them is talking to each other.
So you need to get your teams on the same page.
In larger organizations, a Chief Revenue Officer helps with this, but if you are in a smaller organization, perhaps it makes sense to have sales and marketing have shared goals and base them on the outcomes you are attempting to achieve.
3. Are you reevaluating your effectiveness?
It is the new year, so a lot of time and thought has probably been put into reflecting on what worked and what didn’t work in the last year.
Or, maybe not.
To really keep your revenue engine humming…you need to spend some time reflecting on what is working and what isn’t working at regular intervals throughout the year.
I try to do things quarterly, but I have also become quite found of building my marketing plans into month long sprints with a focus on a specific market or part of the sales development pipeline.
In working with some sports teams, I have even been able to see them utilize 14 day sprints to maximize their revenue and their ability to gain feedback.
The key is to make sure that you are spending some time understanding your successes and your failures so that you can take advantage of what is working and redirect your focus with things that aren’t working.