Sales Organisations vs Delivery Organisations
// June 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All
Have you ever had experiences where colleagues draw boundaries as to where their work responsibilities end?
Well, to a certain degree, I suppose we can’t expect everyone to do above and beyond their responsibilities and this is sometimes true in super-large MNC’s (not generalising here) where we are just another employee in an organisation of 20,000 people.
However, what if you are in a small team of say, 10, 20, or even 50? Would you do it differently?
I used to work in an organisation of 50 where we would have the usual sales division and consultancy division. The sales folks will work their butts off making the sale, and once that’s done, the buck gets dropped to the consultants to deliver it. The consultants were usually charged out by the hour. Some were extremely particular about drawing boundaries of our scope of work because additional work would potentially mean additional hours that don’t result in additional pay. Fair enough…
While there were constant bitching internally from our end about unrealistic timelines and expectations that were promised to customers and etc., we always, always fronted the customer as a team despite our differences. Whatever banter, issues or incompetency were put aside, when we faced the customer.
As my career progressed, I moved closer to the sales organisation, and I slowly began to understand the difficulties on the sales side. Sales folks don’t always get to sell the perfect solution. It’s more of the best solution for the budget. The mindset of a consultant of “why didn’t they sell this, this would have made our life’s easier”, is very different from a sales mindset of “how can I do good with his/her limited budget”. For sales, its simple, its either you win something or you lose it all. But what consultants don’t always understand is that, if sales didn’t have a solution that met the budget and end up losing a deal, consultants have nothing, zero, nada to deliver. So winning partial or half the requirement is better than a loss most of the time.
Looking back at my consulting days, I think I have always understood this (while not in depth). I guess I kinda always knew it was just as tough for the sales folks to close the deal. So did I draw boundaries when delivering services? I don’t think I ever did. In fact, whenever I had the opportunity to upsell or present additional value, I believed I fulfilled it. And because of that, I felt more like part of the team, working towards a common goal. A sales win is a win for the consultants as well, so there were no reason why I wouldn’t do it. When they won, we celebrated together!
In my short career till date, I cannot believe the amount of consultants that I have met that defied everything that I just wrote. They drew lines at every juncture, communicated gaps in a solution to the customer, jeopardised a potential sale and more. Consultants often also bitched about the after hours and weekend work they put in, and how sales folks just golf all day and enjoy themselves. Having been there and done that, you either love what you do or you don’t… I enjoyed every minute of my days as a consultant, but then, I made a choice that I didn’t wanna do crazy hours and possibly wanted to golf too.
So my advice is simple, suck it up as a team player, or just make a choice and move on.
The fundamentals are simple, we rely on each other… no 2-ways about it.
I once discussed this with a colleague as to why consultants never get it? Is it so hard to comprehend?
She gave me a simple answer.
“This is why you have graduated to be in the sales organisation and they haven’t…”
