Fulcrum Consulting (FCI) believes that compamies can leverage existing resources by breaking down the silos between organizations. Fro the past ten years the founder of FCI spent his time explaining to IT organizations that the way to providing better services to their end users was to remove the silos within the IT infrastructure. Prior to ITIL processes each IT silo was measured independently for performance. The net result was that each silo was performing at 99% efficiency and yet the service delivered to the end user was at 94%. Bottom line was that each silo believed that they were doing a great job but the end user was not happy. Does this sound familiar?
It struck FCI that the same lessons could be applied to most organizations regarding sales. All too often companies put the responsibility of revenue generation solely on the shoulders of the sales organization. Due to day to day pressures for revenue, no one takes the time to stop and look at how the different silos are building on one another’s efforts.
What would happen if we measured horizontal performance instead of departmental performance?
Simply stated, the sales organization should not be the only silo responsible for sales. R&D, Marketing, Support, and the Customer should all be part of closed loop sales process. What if R&D could devote scarce resources to develop enhancements that significantly improve the ROI of the software solution? Would giving the sales team an improved ROI position allow them to win more deals or reduce the discount on any sale? Fixing that process alone would improve margins.
R&D
- Is the product being developed in a closed environment?
- Is there too much religion in the R&D organization?
- Is there a connection between R&D and Marketing ?
- fIs the custoemr invioved in settign the roadmap?
- Is there a subject matter expert on the team?
- Is there a focus on the ROI impact for enhancements?
Marketing
- Is there a realistic view of the product positon in the market?
- Can a solid ROI statement be made?
- Is the customer involved in analyzing marketing programs?
- How is markeitng measured?
- Is there too much religion in the organization?
- Is the "Why" getting more attention than the "What"
Sales
- Is sales asked for their feedback on marketing messages, product enhancements?
- Is sale getting the right competitive information?
- Is sales armed with the elevator pitch, the differntiator pitch, the why me pitch?
- Is the right compensation plan in place?
Support
- Is your suport organization producing leads?
- Is your support organization truly the first line of defense?
- Is suport making a bad situation worse?
- Is support creating situations that sales must waste selling time to fix?
- Is R&D connected to support?
- Is there a process to sidnetify the top 5 support issues every month?
Install base
- Does anyone in the company really talk to the customer?
- Do they know what to ask?
- Is R&D involved?
- Are marketing messages tested with them?
- Is anyone mining the wealth of knowledge ?
Prospect
- Win or lose is marketing interviewing the prospect