Alignment

In one context or another, you’ve probably heard the word “alignment” used repeatedly when it comes to business development, sales training, and the customer-supplier relationship.

There’s no doubt that alignment between you and your customer, or your sales strategy and your staff is a must-have for continued success, but how do you get there? If alignment is something you’ve been working toward, in any context of the word, you’ve probably succeeded and failed at achieving it several times. The great part about that is that you are already well on your way to not only achieving alignment but making it stick. In this article, we have 5 steps that will help you reach alignment consistently.

The culture of an organization is a combination of the values and beliefs of your staff. It can be felt in the organization’s implicit rules and expectations – the rules are not written down, but employees know what is expected of them. Usually, management’s policy decisions set up the culture of the organization.

To be fair, every organization’s culture has values and beliefs that either support or hinder the organization’s goals. It’s a part of growing a business and growing your staff. If it is positive, the culture of the organization can motivate employees, or at least prevent them from becoming disengaged. If the climate does not satisfy employees’ needs, it will become a de-motivator and employees will become less inclined to work towards the organization’s goals.

Without alignment, your sales strategy will limp along through a series of successes or failures. Without alignment, your relationship with your customer will not only be less enjoyable for both parties, but it will fail over time.

There are many ways to gain alignment within your organization. You could work through a series of exercises yourself, and/or hire a firm to guide you through the process. One way that we’ve found to be extremely effective when gaining alignment is to follow these 5 steps:

Communicate the goal
Share the data (this step is for everyone involved)
Seek input and incorporate that input into the – strategy
Empower: Assign teams and task the work
Direct and inspect the rollout of the final strategy

These 5 steps don’t only apply to rolling out an alignment strategy when it comes to sales. You may realize that plugging these steps into a customer relations strategy or even social media strategy is highly beneficial as well.

If you have questions about alignment, feel free to reach out. If you would like to learn more about how we develop and create alignment strategies, get in touch with one of our Guides. We’d love to hear from you!

His guidance, leadership, and friendship are PRICELESS

He has mentored me to achieve amazing professional goals without losing sight of the most important part of my life as a wife and mother. His guidance, leadership, and friendship are PRICELESS!!

Brian is a Full Service Mentor

Over the years, Brian has not only mentored the sales team, but also our Department Managers throughout the corporation developing personal goals, department goals, leadership skills, and execution.

A Great Motivator

He has been a great motivator for me, my team, and our organization’s management team. Outside of the impressive sales increase, there is an abundance of projects and initiatives that Brian has successfully led I would like to highlight some of them that ultimately changed my life both professionally and personally.

Learned How to Grow Territory

During the time I work with Brian, he challenged me, showed me how to sell and how to win in almost any circumstance. Brian helped me grow my sales territory (Chicago) from nothing to a $1,000,000+ book of business.

The Summit Solutions is not a one-fits-all process

Is the Summit Solutions a one-fits-all process that will lead to selling more? No, there are plenty of national programs with regional support that will sell you on that. I will tell you from my experience, they are outdated, not personalized, and don’t work. They typically also only focus on the sales department. Brian’s method is to work with the whole organization, while stressing the importance of creating a company culture that people want to be a part of.

As the VP Sales Manager, I was initially skeptical

As the VP Sales Manager, I was initially skeptical and guarded as to why we had to bring in an outside sales expert. I perceived this as an insult to my abilities and the performance of our team. Today I can honestly say that the association, teachings, and concepts Brian presented were the BEST thing to happen to our Company, myself, and our team.

When we started with Summit Learning Solutions we had 62 employees

When we started with Summit Learning Solutions we had 62 employees mostly serving the state of Michigan. Now, we have nearly 200 employees serving 17 states; and we’re still growing consistently. Moreover, when we started with Summit we sold about 3-5 Million a year in new business; now we sell 13 Million a year in new business.

They sourced and hired our first-ever sales team

They sourced and hired our first-ever sales team and created the sales and marketing plan to start the process. They designed our sales team’s compensation plans, trained them on appropriate sales methodology, and lead our overall strategy. Candidly, we thought they were way too optimistic in their sales projections. It turns out they undersold the possibilities. The program was very successful, very fast.

We are a better, healthier, and the more performance-driven company

We are a better, healthier, and the more performance-driven company now thanks to Brian’s training and support. Most importantly, it’s more profitable.