Aligning Strategy and Sales

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Making Connections

Senior executives often preach teamwork at strategy retreats and management meetings. But few firms focus on team effectiveness where it counts most: the cross-functional interactions involved in customer acquisition and retention. There are practical ways to improve the coordination required for strategy implementation. Those practices can improve the company as well as increase selling success.

Why Coordination Is So Important

Consider the order cycle in many businesses, especially B2B businesses that account for so much economic activity in industrialized countries. For the seller, an order touches multiple functions as it moves from a customer's request for specifications or quote to a purchase order and through any ...