A sign of misalignment on the commercial team is the number of people that has this Dilbert comic strip on their wall about the CEO assigning blame for low revenue to sales, who passes the buck to marketing, who then blames engineering. Clearly the team is out of alignment.
What’s interesting is how many senior leaders evidently think that Dilbert applies to other companies, not theirs. For evidence, notice how many Dilbert cartoons are on the wall of a corner office. Someone must be responsible for creating all of Scott Adams’ inspiration!
One possible explanation of the blind spot is that leaders are screened from how the rest of the team sees the company. Maybe there is a lack of data or the team is not giving clear feedback. In any case, light is needed to reveal the issue.
Four conditions exist in the aligned state:
Teammates can accurately describe the desired outcome, the plan to achieve it, and have good reasons to believe it’s achievable
Customers agree that the company’s offerings are valuable in a differentiated and meaningful way
Marketing and sales materials (website, blogs, social media sites, sales enablement content, etc.) are attractive, impressive, and compelling to target customers
The sales team has what they need to diagnose customer problems and prescribe a winning solution
SMP Alignment offers an assessment tool to identify misalignment on the commercial team – those responsible for developing, marketing, and selling the company offering. For an evaluation of your team’s alignment…