Aligning Strategy and Sales

Aligning Strategy and Sales PDF

Author: Frank Cespedes

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2014-08-12

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1422196089

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"The best sales book of the year" — strategy+business magazine That 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.

Aligning Strategy and Sales

Aligning Strategy and Sales PDF

Author: Frank V. Cespedes

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1422196054

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"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.

Sales Management That Works

Sales Management That Works PDF

Author: Frank V. Cespedes

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1633698777

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Named to the longlist for the 2021 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award in the Sales & Marketing category In this smart, practical, and research-based guide, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes offers essential sales strategies for a world that never stops changing. The rise of e-commerce. Big data. AI. Given these trends (and many others), there's no doubt that sales is changing. But much of the current conventional wisdom is misleading and not supported by empirical data. If you as a manager fail to separate fact from hype, you will make decisions based on faulty assumptions and, in a competitive market, eventually fall behind those with a keener grasp of the current selling environment. In this no-nonsense book, sales expert and Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes provides sales managers and executives with the tools they need to separate the signal from the noise. These include how to: Hire and deploy the right talent Pay and incentivize your sales force Improve ROI from your training programs Create a comprehensive sales model Set and test the right prices Build and manage a multichannel approach Brimming with fascinating examples, insightful research, and helpful diagnostics, Sales Management That Works will help sales managers build a great sales team, create an optimal strategy, and steer clear of hype and fads. Salespeople will be better equipped to respond to changes, executives will be able to track and accelerate ROI, and readers will understand why improving selling is a social as well as an economic responsibility of business.

Aligned to Achieve

Aligned to Achieve PDF

Author: Tracy Eiler

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1119291798

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A smart, practical guide to rocket-powered business growth Aligned to Achieve puts sales and marketing on the same page, creating a revenue 'dream team' that will drive your organization to new heights. Smart, practical explanations, case studies, and tips guide you toward action over theory, and dozens of examples illustrate the tangible effects of these changes in action at business-to-business companies. Written by sales and marketing executives who have made alignment work, this book is directed toward practitioners and leaders seeking to crack the code of sales and marketing alignment. Contributions by industry thought leaders and B2B executives provide fresh perspective and nuanced direction, while thoughtful, strategic, and well-supported guidance throughout helps you remove the obstacles standing in the way of your organization's financial and strategic goals. Misalignment between sales and marketing is an age-old problem—frequently lamented, but seldom addressed. As this schism grows amidst the evolving marketplace, its effects on top and bottom line performance are being felt more than ever before. This book shows you how to bring sales and marketing together effectively once and for all, leveraging their strengths to build an unstoppable force for growth. Understand the cost of misalignment and the driving forces behind it Learn strategies for improving your culture, process, leadership, and technology to initiate and support alignment Identify the best places to modify your sales and marketing programs to kickstart collaboration and cooperation between your teams Discover how other companies are uniting their sales and marketing teams into a single force for growth Walk away with practical advice on how to apply recommendation in the real world Misalignment is frustrating for everyone in sales, marketing, and leadership. It's also detrimental to your organization's performance—but the problem is not insurmountable. In fact, most of the obstacles it creates are self-inflicted, and entirely within control of leadership. Aligned to Achieve helps you identify and remove those obstacles, and build a culture of sustainable growth.

Strategic Business Partner

Strategic Business Partner PDF

Author: Dana Gaines Robinson

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2005-03-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 157675801X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Research clearly indicates that there is a strong need for the Human Resources (HR) function, and the people in it, to adopt a more strategic and business-linked approach. In one study business executives ranked the HR function as third, after sales and customer service, as a function that makes a very significant contribution to a company's bottom line. Unfortunately research also indicates that few HR functions have become strategic. Most still operate in a primarily administrative and tactical manner—the very work that is increasingly being outsourced. Clearly there is a gap between what business leaders and employees need from their HR departments and what HR is providing. HR functions must become more integrated into the business, with some people on the HR team assuming the role of Strategic Business Partner (SBP). Here, Dana and Jim Robinson offer guidance for HR, Organization Development and Learning professionals who aspire to transform themselves into effective Strategic Business Partners. They explain how SBPs build partnerships, based upon credibility and trust, with key organization leaders. These partnerships provide SBPs with opportunities to identify and support projects directly aligned with business goals. The success of these projects deepens the SBPs' credibility, enabling them to be viewed as strategic partners. At this higher level of accountability, SBPs work with business leaders to form long-range business strategies and plans, creating and implementing people initiatives that link into and support the business strategies and plans. This practical guide offers case studies, exercises, tips, and tools you can use to become a Strategic Business Partner in your organization.

Negotiating with Backbone

Negotiating with Backbone PDF

Author: Reed K. Holden

Publisher: Pearson Education

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 013306476X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Offers strategies and advice on retaining pricing power for business-to-business salespeople who have to negotiate with procurement departments.

Mobilized Marketing

Mobilized Marketing PDF

Author: Jeff Hasen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-05-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1118243269

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Integrate your mobile marketing program and take your brand to the next level Mobile marketing is finally entering the forefront of the marketing realm as megabrands roll out million-dollar budgets and small businesses have turned to the channel for its affordability, measurability, and repeatable successes in producing sales and driving engagement and loyalty. Through insights from bold industry visionaries and fellow mobile pioneers, Mobilized Marketing takes readers through campaigns worth repeating and others that are not. Learn the many roads that marketers can take and the proven strategies and tactics that move products and build loyalty through the consumer's most personal device. With examples from the more than 130,000 campaigns developed by mobile marketing leader Hipcricket, Mobilized Marketing breaks down how brands of all sizes have performed in their mobile efforts—why some have failed and how others bravely turned to mobile. Demonstrates how to integrate mobile into marketing programs and how to effectively measure it Explains how to make your existing marketing spends work harder Delivers step-by-step instructions on how to optimize campaigns in real-time Shows how to determine which mobile tactics are keepers and which are not It's time to mobilize your marketing programs and drive your profits to new heights.

One Strategy

One Strategy PDF

Author: Steven Sinofsky

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-11-23

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0470560452

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Learn from the concepts, capabilities, processes, and behaviors that aligned around one strategy with the hard-won, first-person wisdom found in One Strategy. Challenging traditional views of strategy and operational execution, this book-written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-describes how you can drive innovation by connecting the potential of strategic opportunities to the impact of operational execution. Lessons from the unique combination of real-world experience managing a large scale organization with academic research in strategy and innovation Reveals what it takes to align a complex organization around one strategy, manage its execution, and reach for "strategic integrity" Written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-a combined forty years of management and research experience A unique perspective on strategy development, alignment, and execution Drawn from Sinofsky's internal Microsoft blog where he communicated some of the management processes the team put to work while developing a 4,000 person, multi-year project-Microsoft Windows 7-One Strategy shares the hard-won insights you can use to successfully make the leap from strategy to execution.

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale PDF

Author: Ardath Albee

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2009-09-25

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0071629440

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Turn prospects into buyers with a powerful emarketing strategy! “Albee shows how smart business-to-business marketers learn about buyers, tell a story, and greatly influence the B2B lead-to-sale process. This is your guide for Web marketing success.” David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and World Wide Rave “A compelling read for both B2B marketing and sales professionals alike, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is a practical and insightful how-to guide that will enable marketers to drive sales conversions and faster sales results.” David Thompson, CEO, Genius.com, and founder of the Sales 2.0 Conference “Albee lays out a path to understanding buyer personas, building their trust, and delivering contagious content that they want to read. A must-read for B2B marketers looking to engage with today’s buyers.” Steven Woods, CTO, Eloqua, and author of Digital Body Language “If you’re looking for a comprehensive, well-researched, single resource to plan, build, execute, and succeed in your eMarketing efforts, then buy this book!” Barry Trailer, managing partner, CSO Insights “New media, content marketing, social networking . . . Ardath cleverly wraps these concepts in a bow and makes this book required reading. . . . Become the expert resource for your customer and watch your business grow.” Joe Pulizzi, coauthor of Get Content Get Customers and founder of Junta42 About the Book Web 2.0 has reshaped the role of marketing in the Complex Sales process. Because prospects now have instant access to information about your company and its products—and your competitors—they can make buying decisions without ever communicating with you. Doing what you’ve always done simply won’t work anymore; you must entirely rethink how you attract and compel buying behavior. With eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, expert B2B marketing strategist Ardath Albee breaks new ground in the field of digital marketing and new customer acquisition. Albee offers techniques and tools for developing and executing strategies that are guaranteed to generate results. The Internet offers an unprecedented opportunity for creating trusted relationships with your prospects and customers—before you ever “meet” them. Never before have marketers enjoyed such a wide-reaching and varied communication platform. Yet with all the noise, you have to stand above the crowd. The key is to converse about meaningful and relevant topics with your diverse audiences, to share your perspectives on what matters to them. That’s just what Albee teaches us to do. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale shares methods to help you: Create eMarketing strategies based on customer perspectives Use a contagious content structure for competitive differentiation Establish trusted relationships Continuously measure, tune, and improve your effectiveness eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale also shares proven approaches to collaborating with sales. You can leverage eMarketing to move leads further into the pipeline while focusing sales time and energy on highly qualified opportunities. The results? Reduced time to sales, increased sales productivity, and growing revenues. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale reveals processes critical to ensuring that you make a powerful, measurable contribution to the lengthy sales process—and to the longterm success of your organization as a whole.

Value-ology

Value-ology PDF

Author: Simon Kelly

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-19

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 3319456261

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book offers both marketing and sales professionals a rare combined insight into both worlds to continuously capture customer intelligence and create value, by blending detailed research with academic rigor and commercial experience of the authors in both Europe and North America. It has never been easier to produce great marketing content and sales collateral. And yet, 90% of the content that marketing produces is NEVER used by sales. Why not? Because it’s not relevant to the audience or the prospect doesn’t even know the content exists. Furthermore 58% of deals end up in “no decision” because Sales has not presented value effectively. Companies are creating lots of noise but failing to resonate with the customers. So what? The danger, aside from marketing wasting tens of millions of dollars on ineffective content and tools, is that customers will disengage. 94% of prospects say they have completely disengaged with vendors because of irrelevant content. In order to grow fast, the authors argue, Sales and Marketing teams need to slow down. They need to work together to truly understand their customers’ needs, wants, motivations and pain points so that they can offer customized “value”. The book sets out how to establish a formal program to continuously capture customer intelligence and insights – the shiny gems of understanding that help prospects to connect the dots – so that value can be consistently articulated in marketing and sales conversations. By integrating the best ideas and practice from commercial experience and academic research the authors show how to create value across the entire marketing and sales value chain – not only get a new customer, but to continue to create value for future purchases by creating “post-sales” value.