Breaking down silos, building up dynamic sales channels

Powering Profitable Sales Growth – Five Imperatives:

One leading factor in creating agility is the willingness to break down the barriers that traditionally separate organizations’ sales, marketing and service functions. Dynamic, customer-centric approaches to sales can’t flourish in an organization filled with silos. What’s needed is an open, integrated environment that allows all parties to work in concert to strengthen customer relationships and drive profitable growth. Yet, Accenture and CSO Insights’ research showed only 29 percent of sales executives prioritized aligning sales and marketing—a nearly 5 percent drop from last year. Leads from other functions are also an issue: One-third of the leads come from the customer service or marketing departments. But, only 15 percent of firms have a formal lead-generation process in place. What’s worse: 63 percent have no formal definition of qualified leads across the organization.

A second factor underpinning agile sales is digital capabilities built on analytics. Today’s digital customers expect companies to interact with them when and where they want and across multiple channels. For companies to deliver consistently satisfying experiences across a dynamic network of external and internal channels, analytics must be the foundation. Yet, our research showed only 30 percent of companies are currently using analytics.

Accelerating the shiftOur research confirmed sales executives are in a quandary. There’s a growing recognition of the value of an integrated, agile selling capability. What’s lacking is the strategy and tools to accelerate the shift. To create a front-office “engine” that powers profitable growth, companies should do whatever they can to break down the decades-old barriers between sales, service and marketing. For starters, they should include sales operations in the mix, since they no longer just enable sales but rather provide fuel to the front-office transformation.

Completely changing the sales operating model to bring a dynamic channel strategy to life is a daunting proposition. But there are guiding principles that can facilitate the change and create a common vision around agile selling. For example, initiatives aimed at driving an agile selling transformation should be assessed against whether they help achieve one of five objectives: standardization, consistency, collaboration, ease-of-use or process adoption. If they don’t address these criteria, they should be dropped. Once a course of action is determined, companies can drive the change in multiple ways:

• Crush the silos: Establish cross-functional communications. Listen to marketing, service and sales reps and managers to build understanding and commitment. Be clear, responsive and engaging, and take advantage of social collaboration and networking tools.

• Design for digital and analog interactions: Design roles and responsibilities to enhance the potential of new processes and tools. Focusing on roles within processes is a good place to start.

• Connect and collaborate: Empower stakeholders and put them in control of the new way they work. Deliver insights and tools to connect them with the customer and each other, including indirect channel partners. Social collaboration forums and digital technologies can give them a voice.

Finally, a note about leadership: Companies should rethink their approach to leadership in a dynamic sales environment. Agile selling success is measured by so much more than closing a deal. It’s about seamlessly managing a complex ecosystem of dynamic channels, processes, digital technologies and customer insights. In the end, it’s all about the customer. Leading companies are able to orchestrate the many moving parts across digital and analog channels. Winners deliver distinctive seller experiences to help drive profitable growth in the new playing field of nonstop customers.

Some future leaders will likely already occupy traditional sales roles. But others will emerge from roles and functions in areas outside sales. In this hybrid leadership model, leaders may have distinct roles and levels of authority, but they must share a common vision for agile selling and a commitment to creating an ecosystem that delivers a superior customer experience as well as acceptable profits to the seller. In short, the leadership team will need to be as dynamic as the channels, insights, technologies and sales processes they oversee.

Contact usTo learn more about driving profitable growth, visit www.accenture.com/salesspeed or contact:

Jason Angelos Managing director—Accenture Strategy, Sales & Customer Services jason.angelos@accenture.com

About AccentureAccenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 305,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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An agile selling organization is, by definition, highly dynamic: responding rapidly to changes in the market, engaged with customers and partners in real time, getting the right opportunities to the right sellers at the right time.

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