Best practices and the impact of aligning Sales and Service

Continued from yesterday's discussion with Jeanne Urich of SPI Research

What are some of the common breakdowns in aligning sales and service processes?

A lack of understanding of key business processes that cross organizational or functional boundaries is at the heart of dysfunctional sales and service delivery relationships. Issues are typically the result of differing views of the processes themselves, unknown or misused levels of authority and ambiguity around who is the ultimate process owner and decision-maker.

How do the organizations who have sales and service processes aligned address these areas?

One way to better align sales and service is through use of the Professional Service Sales Maturity Model. By taking a more systemic approach to sales and service delivery, professional services organizations (PSOs) can optimize staff levels and initiate and complete work on schedule.

Greater clarity around roles, goals and measurements manifests in higher levels of performance and a more satisfied workforce. Maturity improvements result in superior client satisfaction and improved profitability. Once an organization has mapped out key sales and service business processes and supporting roles, goals and measurements; instantiating these business processes in integrated CRM and PSA business application software reinforces and improves alignment.

How does aligning sales and service processes impact an organization’s performance?

To better understand how the integration of sales and service delivery processes increases organizational performance, SPI Research analyzed 118 billable service organizations with between 30 and 700 employees, which is the sweet spot of PSOs. These organizations are large enough to need and deploy business applications such as CRM and PSA.

In the following table SPI Research segmented these organizations into three different categories and analyzed several of the key performance indicators:

1. PSOs that have neither CRM or PSA;
2. Those that have purchased both CRM and PSA, but have integrated neither; and,
3. Organizations that have integrated both CRM and PSA.

The analysis shows improved levels of visibility and effectiveness with integrated PSA and CRM applications. Sales effectiveness improves while sales and marketing costs go down because increased clarity means all elements of the organization are aligned around must-win opportunities. The length of the sales cycle decreases while bid/win ratios go up because the firm is pursuing the right opportunities with the right resources. Increased productivity shows up in higher revenue per consultant, improved project margins and higher bill rates.

Integration Improves Visibility,
Revenue, Margin and Satisfaction

How does this affect an organization’s interactions with their customers?

Aligned sales and service delivery means organizations are pursuing the type of work they are well-suited to perform and once they win the work, they have the right people with the right skills and the right tools available to deliver the work with quality. Sales and service alignment means the firm clearly understands the client’s requirements and has the right expertise to successfully complete the project. Satisfied clients mean clients are willing to refer more work to the service provider, ultimately both the firm and its clients benefit.

Given that the rewards are so great, what is holding organizations back from aligning sales and service processes?

Sales and service alignment is hard work and requires integrated business applications to measure and reinforce the desired behavior. Smaller organizations typically have hybrid sales and service delivery roles with key resources focused on selling one day and delivering the next. As soon as possible, we recommend organizations invest in dedicated sales, marketing and service delivery roles and methodologies and reinforce core business processes with clearly defined metrics and business application software. Quite simply, there is no way a service organization with over 50 consultants can run profitably without integrated CRM and PSA applications.