by Frank Cespedes | Sep 9, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
An estimated 85 percent of companies in the United States use incentive plans, accounting for approximately 40 percent of total sales compensation. That’s a lot of money and managerial effort. Yet in a recent survey of 700 firms by CSO Insights, 20 percent reported...
by Frank Cespedes | Sep 8, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
The equivalent of an entire sales force is replaced at many firms every four years, so it’s critical that go-to-market initiatives remain tied to strategic goals. Frank Cespedes explains how in his book, Aligning Strategy and Sales. Too often, there’s a...
by Frank Cespedes | Sep 8, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
The goal of strategy is profitable growth, meaning economic value above the firm’s cost of capital. There are basically four ways to create that value: (1) invest in projects that earn more than their cost of capital; (2) increase profits from existing capital...
by Frank Cespedes | Sep 5, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
In the first decade of the 21st century, less than half of all startups in the U.S. survived beyond three years. And of the nearly 44,000 companies founded in 2000 and listed in the Capital IQ database, less than six percent achieved more than $10 million in revenues...
by Frank Cespedes | Aug 25, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
One of the best books ever written about selling is David Dorsey’s The Force. Dorsey turns a year in a Xerox sales district in Cleveland into a riveting drama about people, accounts, the operatic highs and lows of the sales cycle, and the triumph of making quota....
by Frank Cespedes | Aug 15, 2014 | Aligning Strategy and Sales, Articles
It’s become commonplace for observers to tout the transformative potential of digital technologies and bemoan the allegedly slow pace at which companies support these initiatives. Two recent blogs published by HBR.org are representative and, I believe, wrong. Walter...
