What Today's Sales Teams Are Missing

By Jose Ruizalba

This interesting report What Today's Sales Teams Are Missing by some academics from IESE Business School @iesebs can shed light for our sessions on the importance of integrating sales and marketing.

http://www.ieseinsight.com/doc.aspx?id=1861&ar=12&idioma=2

Please find here some findings that we can discuss in our sessions of Strategic Marketing:

• The focus on customer acquisition and retention "isn't backed up by concrete strategies. In fact, an analysis of the survey results makes clear that in many cases companies haven't enacted customer-acquisition protocols, a significant portion lack customer-acquisition objectives, and about half neglect to measure their customers' loyalty or implement loyalty programs". This is something that can help you with your Course Work.

• "53 percent of executives surveyed believe their companies' sales and marketing departments aren't sufficiently aligned in terms of the value propositions they offer." This is something that we are frequently discussing in our sessions: the importance of interfunctional coordination.

• "According to the authors, this optimism may help explain why professionalizing commercial networks isn't considered a priority. Only half (54 percent) of survey respondents have a defined and well-known sales strategy (or methodology) internalized by their sales team. An additional 28 percent have such a strategy, but their sales team doesn't put it into practice." Regarding this point, we have also discussed the importance of execution and strategy implementation. Video interview with Jack Welch and the book "Execution" from Bossidy and Ram Charan.

• In relation to digitalization efforts: "The current state of employees' training is unlikely to help managers buck this trend: survey respondents rated "applications and electronic assistance systems" as one of their most deficient areas of training." 

• "Currently, 44 percent of companies don't even have a sales road map, and a further 12 percent have one but don't follow it." Again, the importance of strategy implementation, execution.

• "The executives surveyed were aware of the need to measure customer satisfaction. Currently, only 48 percent regularly carry out satisfaction surveys, yet more than 90 ptercent of companies have used them at least once, or are considering using them in the future." This is quite signifficant that only 48% percent carry out satisfaction surveys.