Increasingly, in such continuously competitive markets, increasing sales can be achieved only through collaboration between those who are involved in them. Gone are the days when aligned communication between sales and marketing silos was enough. Today’s truly effective sales organisations work in integrated teams, sharing their objectives to simultaneously reach their targets. By breaking silos, optimising processes, and leveraging data-driven sales-efficiency strategies, companies do not just improve their performance but effectively build their salesforce and boost revenue.
Breaking Silos for Seamless Alignment
In one global software company, for example, departments such as sales, marketing, and finance traditionally operated autonomously. Poor communication caused them to play different games, so sales were trying to achieve results in ways that weren’t always supported by marketing messaging, and finance was designing sales compensation plans that didn’t necessarily tie into important KPIs. Your company could be trying to sell something that customers are not currently purchasing The principles of teaming were shared throughout the company. Through workshops, sales began passing relevant customer feedback in real time with marketing, so that channels had overlapping communication pathways, and campaigns became more targeted. Finance used this to redesign incentive plans to match main KPIs and meaningful business growth goals. Within six months, win rates had increased by 15 per cent.
Optimizing Processes with Collaboration
Cooperation can also get rid of inefficiencies and reduce bottlenecks. For instance, one major retailer merged sales and operations planning teams to increase its capacity to predict demand and stock inventory. Greater transparency across the enterprise after sharing customer and sales data allowed for inventory optimisation, which in turn resulted in quicker order fulfilment and better customer experience. This ultimately affected the bottom line. In fact, the company ended up with a 10 per cent rise in quarterly sales revenues.
Driving Revenue with Data-Driven Teamwork
A data-based approach to collaboration allows organisations to make decisions. In one telecommunications company that had developed data-sharing protocols for sales, product and financial teams, real-time sales metrics were leveraged to adjust compensation plans and strategies in the moment. As a result, the sales force became agile and highly adaptable – increasing sales across the entire organisation by 20 per cent.
With data helping to breakdown silos and enabling data-driven collaboration, companies can identify the full revenue potential in today’s markets.
