3 steps to drive cross functional alignment

Strategies to get your teams in sync

DEAR STAGE 2: We have a land and expand motion and all agree the most important thing we can do is drive an efficient onboarding process — the faster the customer is seeing value, the easier the conversation about expansion becomes. Can you share any ideas about creating alignment between Sales and Account Management teams as we work through this transition? ~Striving for alignment

DEAR STRIVING FOR ALIGNMENT: I just wrapped up the week at HubSpot’s INBOUND conference (so many highlights!) and presented “Your 9 Levers to Drive Sales Productivity in 2024” with AJ Bruno, Co-Founder & CEO of QuotaPath. One of those levers happens to be “building cross functional alignment.” Would love to share our 3-step approach with you:

Step 1: Identify North Star Metric

Usually, the most difficult part of team alignment is agreeing to the singular top-level goal. Many companies set goals at the department, team and even IC level — but what do they ladder up to? When you zoom all the way out, what are you really trying to accomplish? 

It’s difficult to select just one thing, but incredibly powerful when you get it right. 

At Stage 2, we will argue it’s almost never ARR growth. Your North Star" Metric should be something that will drive a critical change or result for your business and is something you have control and/or influence over. For example, you might choose to focus on a customer activation metric or logo retention. 

You’re already moving in the right direction with your question. Rather than fixating on who owns the upsell number (which is important!), you have agreed that time to value should be the focus. You might consider a North Star Metric related to time to go-live, or look for a product-usage based leading indicator of retention — a metric that signifies that your customer is deriving value from the product.

AJ recommends running a session with your leadership team to get all ideas on the table. By including your leadership team in the decision making process, you get buy-in from day 1 and will have an easier time keeping the North Star Metric top-of-mind throughout the org. 

Step 2: Design and publish “plays”

Once you have a North Star Metric, every team should think through how they can contribute. Again, this starts with a brainstorm — but from there, the goal is to prioritize high impact ideas to test.

You can (and should) start with your North Star Metric to ensure your entire team is moving in the same direction. But ultimately, these ideas should get codified into a playbook that spans your entire customer journey. The format to think through is “if X, then Y.” If your customer takes an action or displays a trigger/signal (X), then your team should do (Y). By defining these plays, you ensure consistency, can track what’s working and make changes over time. For example: 

• If someone does an action in the free product, then an AE chats/emails/calls to help

• When a customer reports a bug, support replies within 4 hours and stays in touch daily through resolution

• If a customer hasn’t logged in for 3 weeks after months of regular activity, CS reaches out for a feedback call

These are just examples, but in the scenario you shared around around efficient onboarding to drive a shorter time to value, you might consider a few specific things: 

• Hand off process and knowledge transfer from AE to CS

• Expectation setting with customer and accountability for shared onboarding plan

• Tradeoffs between in-person, virtual and sync work

• Reporting cadence on progress toward value metric, both internally and customer facing

Leave space to iterate on these plays and keep everyone in the loop on learnings and progress over time!

Step 3: Align compensation

Compensation plans drive behavior and it’s critical that they follow business goals. Don’t be afraid to change the comp plans you have in place to align with your North Star Metric. 

Based on where you decide upsell should live, make sure that your comp plans encourage the behavior you need and that all teams are compensated for their contribution. Examples:

• Sales: You might consider paying a higher commission rate on expansion revenue to ensure the sales team is not incentivized to sell larger deals up front

• CS/AM: Tie variable pay to hitting a defined go-live date or leading indicator of retention 

Hope this helps as you think through building cross-functional alignment. 

Until next week!