Organizations and Alignment - Case Study

Aligning Sales, Marketing and Operational Divisions for improved Sales Effectiveness

 

As an internal consultant for a high-growth division within a Fortune 50 healthcare company, the goal was to objectively uncover, diagnose, explore, and make recommendations to augment and extend their current strategy to grow overall revenue within this division through alternative processes, methods, and channels.

Challenge:

The division was heavily reliant upon their parent company for market segmentation, territory planning and sales approaches. This heavy reliance left many markets sub-optimized, limiting their growth strategy due to this strong tie, as their parent company was also a competitor to many channel partners with whom they could more proactively team. Their growth potential was very high; however sales and sales leadership felt a strong level of frustration due to limitations being placed on how they could go-to-market, ongoing sales conflict in the field due to no standard 'rules of engagement' or account management processes between the division and the parent company, and a over-weighted dependency on the existing broker channel for leads (over 90% of leads came through the broker channel) with no methods to track, qualify or manage these referrals.

Action steps:

The team, of both internal and external resources, implemented a sales effectiveness study which consisted of:

• Interviewing over 40 members of the executive and leadership teams, from all functional groups within the division; as well as key members of the sales team to gain a clear understanding of the realities they face in the market and internally.
• Reporting the team's findings, the subsequent implications, and their recommendations to address key opportunities in these areas: market segmentation, territory planning, lead management, forecasting and pipeline management, account management, knowledge management/training, partner management, and cross-segment selling and leverage.
• Prioritizing the numerous areas for improvement, to the top three which would give leadership the greatest 'bang for the buck,' gaining executive leadership endorsement to implement these changes, and move forward assertively for fiscal year implementation.        

Results:

The sales effectiveness study was successful in attaining top-down awareness and understanding of what the real issues were facing the division. This resulted in a collaborative interest in solving the issues, and making the implementation of key changes successful. The division invested in a complete review of their current sales go-to-market strategy; which included analysis of their current market segments, their size, potential, channels to those markets, potential barriers for success, and ongoing critical success factors. This cross-functional review resulted in a mutually agreed upon, and fully aligned strategy moving forward across all segments within the division. The revisions improved sales performance, and provided greater visibility of their channel partners' performance in various markets. Finally, it provided clarity and support toward implementing the next steps in Sales Effectiveness review recommendations, which included ongoing broker/channel management reviews/workshops, territory management and pipeline management streamlining, and ongoing people management workshops.