Is the sales strategy clearly linked to overall business strategy?
Challenging business conditions mean regular,necessary changes to corporate strategy.Modifying sales strategies to reflect new direction requires being light on the corporate feet but is easier said than done. And yet, it is important to check that customer-facing staff are marching to the current corporate drumbeat. In this organisation there was a desire to migrate customers to alternative channels in order to reduce costs and exploit the opportunities created by the recently refocused contact centres. But network staff and managers were still working on the old model of satisfying needs at the first point of contact. They were not inclined to promote alternatives. Short term goals were being achieved at the expense of longer term corporate needs. Once alerted, top management focused more of their own and field managers time on observing and reinforcing channel migration activities. Getting the message over clearly meant top management changing their activities to ensure field behavi
