Building equity in the finance and sales relationship is integral to your top-line growth, as well as your bottom-line subsistence.
What factors can make your sales relationship a liability?
1. Strangers in a Strange Land
It shouldn't be a shock that successful salespeople often have a contrasting skill set from successful financial leaders. Salespeople are concerned with growing their numbers quickly, eliminating barriers to communication and finding ways to meet customer needs. Finance has complementary concerns. Among them: profitability, ROI and business health. If you aren't finding ways to communicate and use these differences as opportunities, your business might suffer.
2. The Wrong Carrots
How is your sales team currently compensated? Are they incentivized myopically on deal size or deal volume? Failing to enable your salespeople to exhibit the behaviors that contribute to your company profitability spells trouble on the horizon. Conversely, incentivizing your credit and finance managers on similarly myopic metrics such as DSO reduction can inhibit your sales team from the global thinking critical to modern business success. Give both teams the right carrots.
3. A Poor Customer Experience
According to CFO Alliance, 46% of CFOs believe that the customer experience is the primary contributor to top-line growth. Your sales team is your customers' first, and often only, human conduit between your company and your customers. Ensuring that you take steps to de-gunk your quote-to-cash practices and examine your collections procedures critically are good first steps to bridge the chasm between the human and quantitative aspects of growth.