It is reasonable to expect that business executives concerned strategy execution would view persistently low return on investment in sales effort as a significant challenge.

Sales strategy delivers less than half of the financial performance forecast according to Growthplay, a sales-focused consulting firm. A challenge identified is the sales force focus on things that both clients and leaders don’t necessarily value, the sales force remains unclear about strategy, what constitutes value and performance expectations.

This obvious alignment problem is remedied revamping compensation and performance evaluations to include strategy execution behavior. Linking strategy to behavior suggests a change in the conversations sales-people have with their clients. Growthplay established that acquiring new behavioral skills requires experiential learning to be effective and coaching to support training and reinforce the alignment process while addressing compensation, performance management, and recruitment practices.

Source: Executives and Salespeople Are Misaligned — and the Effects Are Costly