While the subject of internal team alignment is discussed among many of today’s sales teams and its importance is universally acknowledged, few truly understand how to organize and engage their teams to become more strategic and co-create value with customers. Given the challenges of ill-defined roles, conflicting goals, compensation discrepancies and account control issues, it’s rare to see cohesive teams working collaboratively toward the common goals of co-creating customer value and closing more deals.
Drawing on over two decades of Performance Methods, Inc. (PMI’s) experience with cross-functional teams, this article explores the essential elements of team alignment from the perspective of sales trainers, who play a pivotal role in equipping teams with the skills and knowledge necessary for success.
What Is Cross-Functional Team Alignment and Why Is It Important?
In today’s Zoom-enhanced sales environment, many seem to feel that simply including more people on a meeting invite means that you have a cross-functional team, but effective team alignment in sales requires far more. It requires the synchronization of efforts, goals and strategies among a variety of cross-functional disciplines with the common objectives of meeting customer needs and driving revenue.
Understanding the dynamics of such alignment is key to developing training programs that foster a collaborative mindset, emphasizing the critical role of shared goals and strategies in meeting customer needs and driving revenue growth. Why is alignment so important? To answer this question, we need to dig deeper into the buying process.
According to Gartner, over 75% of B2B buyers have done their own research online before speaking to a sales professional. Many of these customers already understand the features and functions of your offering. When they connect with your sales team, their questions are related to how the purchase will impact other departments in their organization, if it will provide the proper return on investment (ROI) and deliver business outcomes, what it will take to implement the solution and what resources you can offer that will facilitate adoption of new best practices. Alignment is important because the customer needs to feel that your organization can not only meet their expectations but do so in a way that will connect with their objectives and how they define success.
When your team is not properly aligned, customers begin to question if your organization will be able to deliver business value and outcomes while reducing risk to their organization. Conversely, a fully aligned and unified cross-functional team can improve the customer’s confidence in your organization, increasing the likelihood of winning the opportunity.
Who Should Be on the Cross-Functional Team and Why
Let’s look at the importance of understanding who should be on the cross-functional team to ensure we have the talent required to deliver on our customer commitments. Effective team structure and alignment can unlock the potential of synergy. According to PMI’s experience and research, successful cross-functional sales teams have clear delineation of who needs to be on the team and how their talents will be leveraged to co-create customer value.
Sales managers and trainers must focus on the development of role-specific competencies and the ability to leverage individual strengths in a team setting to ensure that each team member can contribute optimally. These sales teams are composed of both core and extended members. Core members on the team are engaged frequently with the account, weekly or even daily depending on the size of the account and the extent of their roles in customer value co-creation. Extended members are engaged less frequently but are just as important to the team, as they can bring unique value to the customer relationship in very specific areas.
It is always important to consider the specific situation, the fit with customer requirements and the alignment between your cross-functional team and that of the customer. There isn’t a hard and fast formula for this, as the composition of the team depends on the dynamics of each individual sales opportunity.
Strategies to Optimize the Deployment of Cross-Functional Teams
Having now assembled your cross-functional “dream teams” to co-create more value for customers and win more opportunities, you will need to ensure that you have the right leadership or “quarterback” for your team. Many times, customer needs become more complex and their deadlines for delivery become more compressed.
Team leaders need to prioritize actions, assemble resources for deployment and be able to call the plays to meet customer demands. They should be personally invested in the team’s success and must be able to understand what matters most to each customer team member. Additionally, team leaders are likely to be more successful if they facilitate ongoing internal brainstorming and collaboration with their team and extend this to external collaboration with the customer’s team. Ideally, this core team member and leader is the lead salesperson or the key/strategic account manager but, more importantly, it is someone who displays the qualities of an effective leader.
PMI’s experience with industry leading organizations indicates that underperforming teams lack focus, lack leadership and ultimately fail to execute the desired objectives. We’ve seen these failures caused by a variety of factors, from communication barriers (particularly in geographically dispersed and virtual teams) to the misalignment of goals and priorities, to conflicting incentives, skill level differentials and organizational silos.
Sales managers and trainers should emphasize leadership skills in their programs, preparing team leaders to effectively coordinate efforts, communicate priorities, and foster internal and external collaboration.
To enhance performance, team leaders and their teams need support and coaching in:
1. Establishing Clear Goals and Expectations
Training programs should help teams establish and align around customer-centric objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable and timely (SMART). These goals should also align with and support broader organizational goals and objectives. Team members should understand both their individual roles and responsibilities on the team, as well as the goals of the team itself.
2. Strong Communication, Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing
Encourage the development of skills that promote transparency, feedback, and knowledge sharing within teams, essential for fostering a collaborative culture. Critical areas involving solving customer problems, building customer relationships and co-creating value need to be communicated among team to ensure that members are up to date with recent developments. By fostering a culture of learning and development, “all ships rise with the tide,” and you enhance the skills and expertise across the entire cross-functional team.
3. Provide Ongoing Training and Support
Sales managers and learning and development leaders understand the need to continually invest in the resources to equip team members with the skills and knowledge to succeed in their roles on the team. Account leaders should be coaching and mentoring their cross-functional team members to foster team cohesion as well as individual growth. The team is only as strong as its weakest link and leaders must ensure that each member is aware of their responsibilities, armed with the necessary resources and recognized when specific milestones are achieved.
How Well-Aligned Teams Work Together to Co-Create Value With Their Customers
When sales teams are aligned, they not only meet their sales targets more predictably but also enhance customer satisfaction through coordinated efforts. Training programs that focus on developing skills for collaboration, communication and customer engagement can significantly contribute to the team’s ability to co-create value with customers.
Alignment ensures clarity of purpose among your sales team, enhancing efficiency in pursuing their sales targets. When cross-functional team members commit to active participation, it fosters a sense of unity and collective responsibility, thus motivating team members to work collaboratively to co-create value and drive revenue. This sense of purpose and responsibility among the team leads to higher levels of employee engagement and satisfaction. We have seen significant cultural shifts among sales organizations that best foster and support successful cross-functional team alignment, benefiting both the organization and its customers.
Effective team alignment also helps build long-term partnerships with your most important accounts by co-creating measurable value that aligns directly with the business outcomes and success of these customers. This synergy allows for a more effective pursuit of sale targets, resulting in improved performance for your organization, as well as value co-creation for your customers. Sales managers and trainers contribute to this process by delivering a more consistent and cohesive customer experience from initial contact to post-sale support.
By gaining a deeper understanding of customer needs and preferences, and through collaboration on customer interactions, team members can tailor their approach to help customers overcome challenges and achieve their objectives. This results in an enhanced customer experience leading to higher levels of satisfaction, reinforced trust and loyalty to your brand.
Effective sales managers, coaches and trainers ensure that their teams are equipped to anticipate and address future customer needs by staying attuned to market trends and customer feedback, helping cross-functional teams co-innovate and adapt their approach to meet the customer “where they are,” and positioning your organization as a trusted advisor in the customer’s journey.
Conclusion
For sales managers and trainers, fostering cross-functional team alignment serves as a powerful mechanism for discovering, co-creating and delivering value to your customers. By assembling an effective cross-functional team with clearly defined roles and fostering open communication and collaboration, you can leverage the cross-functional strengths and talents of the team to build more trust-based customer relationships that will help drive mutual growth. A synchronized team will be able to provide a more consistent, customer-centric experience when the roles and responsibilities of team members are clearly defined, collaboration and knowledge sharing is encouraged, and they are provided ongoing coaching, training and support.
As organizations seek to differentiate themselves among the competition, prioritizing cross-functional team alignment emerges as a strategic imperative for enhancing the co-creation of customer value and driving sustainable growth. Achieving and sustaining team alignment is not easy, but when executed properly it can become a significant differentiator in distinguishing your company over competitors that are not as effectively aligned.
