Unrealistic commitments,Missing Link between Sales and Delivery - Strategies for Improvement

A project management approach to business problems and opportunities is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Projects are the tools for implementing the strategy of the organization. Effective project management starts with selecting and prioritizing projects that support the organizational mission and strategy. The priority system focuses attention on the mission and major goals of the organization and fosters consensus to which projects are of highest priority. It results in a portfolio of projects that balance threats and opportunities and provides a better utilization of resources.

The ability of an organization to execute its strategy is directly proportional to its ability to understand and communicate the strategy.

Strategic initiatives in the context of marketing can be investments into marketing programs or activities, with specific ROI targets, and eventually, ROI results.

Strategic objectives are numerical measurements that are commonly referred to as Key Performance Indicators or “KPIs”.

The creation of a strategy map and scorecard for each major organizational unit allows the goals of the organization to be explicitly and visually aligned. Cause and effect arrows link the upstream measurements across time to the downstream measurements. These key measurements are used to represent strategic objectives that highlight specific goals that lead to increased shareholder value.

According to me quite often this situation arises through the desire of a sales team which wants to meet targets irrespective of whether an opportunity is strategic or in fact it is  achievable or not.

It is clear to me that this is behaviour that needs to be controlled in someway in order to prevent organizations from churning through people and having to continually employ to stay at the same size, and from lacking any sort of technical direction.


So how do we ensure that the sales team is selling things that are in line with the aspirations of the staff which is handling projects, the technical direction of the company, and that are deliverable? So to overcome this situation we need upfront technical team involvement in the sales process, this could involve an individual architect taking responsibility for the technical direction of an account, or a group of architects taking responsibility for all accounts. This group of people would also help to enforce the technical direction of the company, and can facilitate  the technical knowledge sharing across accounts to enable work to be more effective.

So one should be given charge in such situations and this is the biggest barrier according to me as nobody is sponsoring this at the right level in the organization or else time and again the sales team will do these things to meet the targets and by doing this they simply ignore the project people entirely, believe me i've had many experiences in this regard.

Proposal Defence skills could be improved to represent and justify the basis of proposal.  

(Primarily all the justification components such as Assumption, Cost Drivers, Benefit and risk for the arrived at dollar value)

This requires the Proposal defence team to have the below  skills

1. Estimation

2. Atleast High level Understanding of the delivery challenges , risks

3. Idea on Operational Issues involved in an Onsite offshore model

Such situations are the most common in emerging countries or common market place like India. While we must have the right focus on our organization and personal profitability, we should have equal and important concerns on what we are producing and what Goodwill are we building for our organization.

If we are in the Business of Goodwill, we ensure quality for our "partners" (Clients), our partners will ensure our profitability.

To be into business of Goodwill, we need to have a ver strong Vision in which we all belief till our death and two, we must have very strong and positive business ethics which will always think of transparency and betterment of our partners.

Rest assured, if you follow these guidelines, you will not only ensure quality of products & services delivered to your partners, but your sales team will also ensure that they only deal with quality partners who understand and value that you are in the business of goodwill.

Best!