Aligning Sales and Business

Sales Eductors Academy quotes a “recent study” by H R Chally Group indicating that sales is becoming increasingly important for today’s business graduates in the United States (http://www.saleseducatorsacademy.com). It predicts that 82% of all marketing majors and 66% of all college of business students are headed for a sales-related job. Meanwhile, US companies spend over $900 billion on their sales forces – three times more than they spend on all ad media. “Sales is, by far, the most expensive part of strategy execution for most firms,” Frank V Cespedes and Christopher Wallace wrote this year in HBR.* Yet, on average, companies deliver only 50-60% of the financial performance that their strategies and sales forecasts have promised. 56% of executives say their biggest challenge is ensuring that their daily decisions about strategy and resource allocation are in alignment with their companies’ strategies.