by Frank Cespedes | Dec 9, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
It’s that time of year again: the dreaded performance review. While this practice is key to getting teams to set priorities and clarify actions, managers (and employees) often treat it as a make-work task instead of a productive conversation. Perhaps it’s...
by Frank Cespedes | Nov 25, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
It’s tough for people to implement what they don’t understand. Communicating priorities to the front line, especially salespeople, is highly correlated with business performance. Conversely, this “middle ground” is where strategy execution often breaks down. Yet, many...
by Frank Cespedes | Nov 12, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
Putting the right team on the field is crucial, especially in sales, where differences in individual performance are greater than in other functions. Studies in B2B contexts find that rep performance in similar territories often varies by 300 percent, while in retail...
by Frank Cespedes | Nov 6, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
Perhaps it’s time for a re-think of “Death of a Salesman.” After two decades of talk about the “new economy” and the “disruption” of certain professions by the Internet, you might think that sales as we know it is as stale and outdated as Willy Loman — a function that...
by Frank Cespedes | Oct 28, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
Strategy has shrunk. For many firms and even for some prominent strategy consultants, the concept is now nothing more than “just-in-time decision making” or “a few critical initiatives” or other variations on “adaptability.” Driving this view is a set of assumptions:...
by Frank Cespedes | Oct 20, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
Let’s consider some common assertions with respect to sales compensation that in my experience, are often false. The fear is that “complex” plans can cause salespeople to spend too much time calculating payoffs instead of selling and taking care of...
