Bring Systems Into Alignment

"For Sales to be successful, Marketing needs to take the lead – both literally and figuratively. Marketing must position the company as the "go to" resource for potential users of their products, services and solutions." – Jill Konrath, Chief Sales Officer / Author

There are numerous systems within an organization that must be working together to achieve success. As part of our 'Systems' work, SGI also focuses on the 'Alignment" of leadership, product, market, and sales. Without alignment the companies vision and related goals are most likely unachievable; the brand is not concise; systems are not adopted; and sales and marketing will continue to point fingers at each other.

We can show you overwhelming evidence that product alignment with the market, and sales with marketing, are both absolutely a critical business needs. In a dramatically changing market landscape and global economy where all of the rules of media, advertising and business communications seem to be in upheaval knowing where to start can be overwhelming and costly.

Through our years of experiencing, leading, driving, planning and executing growth initiatives, we have developed five critical alignment principals for driving revenue and growth:

• Marketing-Centric: Leadership must employ a marketing-centric versus a sales-centric management approach. Marketing is constant. Marketing drives the message. Marketing provides sales tools. Marketing provides the feedback into the rest of the organization. Marketing and sales must be in alignment.
• Customer-Focus: In today's market where most products and services have been regulated to commodity status from the perspective of meeting your customer's needs—what utlimately matters is the customer. Your product, service, or solution must first align with the right markets, and then your customer's in those markets.
• Common Goals: All key stakeholders, sales, and marketing must embrace the same vision and goals, and be be rewarded ont the same performance metrics. When senior leadership, marketing ,and sales are aligned around a single revenue cycle, dramatic improvements in marketing ROI, sales productivity, and top-line revenue growth goals will be achieved.
• Integrated Systems: No matter how much pressure there is to create a silo or flat organizational structure, as many systems and processes as possible must integrated into a single platform or simplified process. Uniformity is key to simplicity. Mimimizing the distractions and clutter of multiple systems increase the adoption process and performance.
• Strong Community: Aligning your vision with your communities only enhance your brand and mindshare of your product, service or solution. A strong community allows to maximize the benefits of social media and networking; and can often help deflect negative interference or unwanted noise.

For a predictable outcome your Vision, Brand, Systems and Community must be in alignment. Check out our Organizational Alignment Solution for how predicatably watch your business grow.