Sales and Services Alignment

How to eliminate gulfs and fix dysfunctions

by Carey Bettencourt, Jeanne Urich and Dave Hofferberth, Service Performance Insight

In a highly competitive environment, a company must successfully differentiate itself and effectively orchestrate the sales cycle. Unfortunately, many times schisms between the sales and services delivery organizations surface during the sales process. This results in deal closure delays or, worse yet, losing the deal.

Aligned Thinking Secret 1

Start with a clear purpose and mission

by Dr. Jim Steffen

It’s almost like a blinding flash of the trivial obvious: If you want something that’s important to you - when you clearly know what you want, it’ll be much easier to get it. Interviews with successful managers of time clearly showed that if it’s not written, there’s a good chance that it’s not clear.

Question: There’s been a lot of talk about employee engagement. What does it mean for a company to have a culture where their employees thrive?

Answer: Don’t Shy Away From Employee Engagement
by Mary McCoy, creator, Work Point Average

The statistics on employee engagement are irrefutable. Good things happen to companies when their employees are engaged, and mediocre things happen when they are not. Towers Watson reports that companies that have higher levels of engagement enjoy 19 percent improvement in operating income, while the Hay Group finds they have 40 percent lower turnover. Yet 72 percent of U.S. workers are not engaged, according to Gallup. And ACCOR has found that 75 percent of business leaders have no engagement plan or strategy.

Effects of putting interaction on autopilot

by Meryl K. Evans, Professional Services Journal

When I tuned into Twitter for my midday conversations on April 15, I immediately noticed a lot of mentions of #bostonmarathon. I also caught many tweets along the lines of “Turn off automated tweets,” especially a strong one from author and speaker Gary Vaynerchuk.