This is tangentially related to your point about Sales, but I wanted to share because it got me thinking quite a bit. In “Build”, Tony Fadell argues that no sale should happen in isolation:
“Every sale should be a team sale. So if you have a customer success team (the team that actually delivers, sets up, and maintains whatever is sold to the customer), then it should sign off on every deal. Sales and customer success should be under one leader, in the same silo, being compensated in the same way. In this setup, sales can’t just throw a customer over the fence and never think about them again. If there’s no customer success team, then sales should work very closely with customer support, operations, or manufacturing—create a board of people to approve each commitment.”
So maybe one solution to the output/outcome ambiguity is to have teams more tightly coupled and have combined accountability to the outcomes?
Yup! I am developing my thinking in this area, but wondering whether (on the balance of things) quarterly sales bonuses are helpful for a product organisation. I also interviewed Brent Adamson on the podcast where he spoke about something similar with regards to an organisation which doesn't have silos and everyone is responsible for sales. I think there might be something to it!
This is tangentially related to your point about Sales, but I wanted to share because it got me thinking quite a bit. In “Build”, Tony Fadell argues that no sale should happen in isolation:
“Every sale should be a team sale. So if you have a customer success team (the team that actually delivers, sets up, and maintains whatever is sold to the customer), then it should sign off on every deal. Sales and customer success should be under one leader, in the same silo, being compensated in the same way. In this setup, sales can’t just throw a customer over the fence and never think about them again. If there’s no customer success team, then sales should work very closely with customer support, operations, or manufacturing—create a board of people to approve each commitment.”
So maybe one solution to the output/outcome ambiguity is to have teams more tightly coupled and have combined accountability to the outcomes?
Yup! I am developing my thinking in this area, but wondering whether (on the balance of things) quarterly sales bonuses are helpful for a product organisation. I also interviewed Brent Adamson on the podcast where he spoke about something similar with regards to an organisation which doesn't have silos and everyone is responsible for sales. I think there might be something to it!