I recently had the pleasant opportunity of having a discussion with several members of an organization who seem to be ‘getting it.’ And by getting it, they seem to understand that Sales has their definite purpose, but before everything is locked in place on an engagement, that Sales team really needs involvement from the delivery team to make sure this is all going to work. Sounds logical, right? Well, many organizations are making it a lot harder than it should be. I apologize if this sounds old to you since I’ve written about it before…but I hope you’ll stick with me and read on…
Sales is great, but….
Sales is obviously a key organization in any professional services company. Without sales, we’d have no projects to work on. However, many companies that I’ve worked with or for seem to think that there is a distinct line between Sales and the delivery part of the organization. You often hear, “Here, Sales closed this deal and now it’s your project – link up with Sales and get the handoff information so you can start the project.” Those words make me cringe. There are probably a long list of things that are wrong with that process, but I can give you three major ones right now:
#1 – Sales is primarily concerned with the sale
Sales is worried about making sales. After all, it is their job. And their salaries, commissions, and bonuses depend on it. If they didn’t make the sales, the rest of us in the professional services organization would have nothing to deliver on.
What’s wrong with this? Nothing really – but as I’ll discuss in #2 below, they aren’t Delivery and therefore are not in tune with what Delivery needs out of the Sales process.
#2 – Sales isn’t Delivery
While Sales is very important, they are not the same as Delivery and vice versa. Each have their own concerns, interests and needs to look out for. Sales can’t automatically assume what information Delivery needs and Delivery can not begin to assume that Sales will gather all relevant information needed by Delivery to actually start work on the project. And this topic leads us into the next…
#3 – Delivery needs specific information
To actually being the project with the customer and with team members, Delivery – specifically the project manager – needs specific information related to the engagement. This necessary information, of course, varies by industry, company, and even by engagement, but it is critical and the delivery organization needs this information before it can move forward with the customer.
I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve sat in front of the customer or that I’ve been on the phone with the customer and I’ve been surprised that they weren’t told ‘x’ or didn’t have ‘y’ information for me. There were too many assumptions being made between Sales and Delivery and the end result was sometimes humiliation in front of the customer. And that only serves to decrease customer satisfaction and confidence in the delivery team’s ability to deliver.
Summary