Overview

Moving closer together – cooperation in sales

In today’s sales world, one thing is of paramount importance: Answering all open questions from demanding customers immediately and providing them with a binding offer quickly. So it’s all about knowledge and speed. And this at a time when products and services are more varied and complex than ever and are increasingly being configured individually according to the customer’s specific requirements. Anyone who fails to deliver here will quickly lose prospective customers to the nearest competitor. After all, nobody wants to wait long these days.
This has two consequences for sales: Firstly, it has to coordinate much more intensively with other specialist departments – especially with Technical Clarification, Production and Purchasing – in order to gather all the necessary information for a quotation. And secondly, this coordination must take place very quickly. This means that the sales department must significantly expand and improve cooperation within its own company. In recent years, this has often been a downstream priority. To put it kindly.
Many companies have long understood how important good cooperation is. Not just in sales. This assessment is confirmed by a 2017 study by the Institute for SME Research: of 1,400 managers in SMEs surveyed, 75% consider closer cooperation within the company and 63% stronger cooperation with other companies to be essential in order to successfully shape the digital transformation.

Conditions for good cooperation

However, it is also clear that collaboration means effort and doesn’t just happen. Especially when the cooperation partners, both customers and other specialist departments, are based in different locations – sometimes in several time zones. This raises the question of how optimal collaboration can work and what the critical factors are.

Binding standards

Everyone has their own preferences and habits. This is not a bad thing in itself – quite the opposite, because it is precisely this individuality that creates personal bonds, which play a particularly important role in sales. However, in order for different people to work well together, they need standards for certain aspects of cooperation. For example, there must be clear rules on how documents are created, named and filed. This is the only way to ensure that everyone involved can find their way around. It must also be defined how cooperation in sales is structured and which work steps follow one another. It also makes sense to define standards for decision-making. In sales, for example, this serves to determine the conditions that can be granted to a customer.

Clear responsibilities

Responsibilities are closely linked to the standards. After all, it is not only important to know how the sales process is structured in abstract terms. It must also be clear which person is responsible for which tasks, which duties and which competencies they have. This ensures that the workflow is driven forward quickly and does not come to a standstill because nobody is interested in the next step. It must also be regulated who can issue instructions to other people in the process – for example, if deadlines for feedback are not met.

Standardized information basis

The people involved in a sales process should be able to access a standardized information base. As a rule, it will be sensible and necessary to assign graded authorizations. This affects all documents that are directly related to a purchasing process – from the customer’s requirements to CAD drawings from the development department to all quotation versions and finally the order. However, it is also important that those involved can always track the status of the process.

Communication

Even if standards have been set, obligations regulated and an information basis created – ultimately, every cooperation depends on communication between the partners. They need to discuss challenges and work together on solutions. And they have to send signals about the progress of the process. All of this can happen unstructured – for example in a phone call or in person during a meeting in the hallway. However, it is usually better to work systematically here too. This avoids misunderstandings and ensures that the sender’s message reaches the addressee.

IT is the means to an end

In short, the key to good cooperation is that the parties involved agree on clear guidelines and stick to them. This initially requires a certain amount of mental effort to find sensible rules in the first place. And it requires the will to comply with them, even if this sometimes seems cumbersome. If this is the case, IT solutions are a useful tool for implementing cooperation in sales on a daily basis. This is because they can be used to establish rule-based workflows and store information systematically.