Corporate Strategy and its Relationship to Sales and Marketing

A company that hopes for a prosperous future must have a sound plan. In the world of Sales and Marketing this is called Corporate Strategy.
Corporate Strategy is the overall direction of the company, defined by senior management, that takes into consideration an assessment of the existing capabilities of the company and external opportunities and threats. It usually coincides with the immediate future fiscal period or it could be developed with a longer-term view, such as a three-year plan.
It is important to understand the overall Corporate Strategy and its relationship to sales and marketing. The Marketing Strategy works within the direction provided by the overall Corporate Strategy of the company and also interacts with other elements of the Corporate Strategy.
Corporate Strategy is a combination of the following:

• Senior Management Direction and Insights: This is provided by senior management based on their experiences and insights related to the business.
• Corporate Product Strategy: This defines the products or services the company offers and the research and development efforts required to create them.
• Corporate Marketing Strategy: This defines how the company will target, position, market and sell the planned products and defines metrics, targets and budgets for all marketing activities.
• Corporate Operations Strategy: This defines how the company will manage operational activities, manufacture its products and provide the corresponding customer support and warranty.
• Corporate Finance Strategy: This defines how the company will manage its finances, attain funding and financially sustain its operations. The Finance Strategy should include forecasts and projections and summarize costs, income and investments.
• Corporate Human Resource Strategy: This maps the human resource capabilities within the company and considers talent management and acquisition needs to sustain growth.

Here are the components of Corporate Strategy:
Typically, companies have existing documentation regarding their component strategies. These must be considered in an integrated manner to define a coherent Corporate Strategy. The level and complexity of documentation for these strategies may vary depending on the size of the company and the breadth of its product portfolio and geographic reach. If formal documentation of these strategies is not available—for instance, as with a start-up company—the teams involved in strategic planning should consider the various strategies and decide on an overall Corporate Strategy, which can then become a benchmark to execute future plans. The SMstudy® Guide framework is a great help in this endeavor.
Finalizing the company’s Corporate Strategy can be a time-consuming and rigorous exercise that requires inputs from multiple stakeholders, particularly senior management. It is advisable to execute strategic planning exercises at appropriate and specific time intervals, such as once or twice a year, and then finalize a Corporate Strategy on which senior management and the heads of strategy teams agree. Following this process will help to ensure that the leadership team has coherently defined goals and strategies that align with the overall strategic goals of the organization.
The Corporate Strategy can be divided into lower level strategies depending on the complexity of the organization. For example, the Corporate Strategy for an entire company can be divided into strategies for each business unit or geographic region such as country, state, or city, and then subdivided further into a Product or Brand Strategy for each product or brand in a business unit or geographic region. The Product or Brand Strategy is the lowest level in this hierarchy.
This illustrates the relationship between Corporate Strategy, Business Unit/Geographic Strategy and Product/Brand Strategy:
Corporate strategy is an umbrella under which many components of a company plan for future profitability. When that umbrella operates at full force, the forecast calls for raining money.

Acknowledgement: www.smstudy.com
Blog URL: http://www.smstudy.com/Article/Corporate-Strategy-and-its-Relationship-to-Sales-and-Marketing

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Corporates

• Generate additional revenues and accounts through a well-trained Sales and Marketing team

Employees are the force that drives most organizations. A well-trained Sales and Marketing team performs much better and achieves quality customer accounts resulting in increased revenues. 

SMstudy is the Global Accreditation body for Sales and Marketing certifications. You can become a Authorized Training Partner (A.T.P.) of SMstudy for free—gaining access to the SMstudy classroom study materials, high-quality online courses and mobile apps—and start training your employees immediately at no additional cost.

• Provide free industry-recognized courses and certifications to your employees

In order to establish a baseline of knowledge and understanding for your employees, SMstudy provides valuable and well-recognized free certifications and subscriptions on different Aspects of Sales and Marketing. The free subscription includes 100+ high-quality videos, case studies, chapter test questions and more to help your employees gain an understanding of the different facets of Sales and Marketing that they can begin using right away.

• Train your employees on a standardized framework

SMstudy is the Global Accreditation body for Sales and Marketing Certifications. SMstudy offers comprehensive courses and certification programs based on the SMstudy® Guide (also referred to as the Sales and Marketing Body of Knowledge—SMBOK Guide). The SMstudy® Guide explains Sales and Marketing concepts through a practical, standardized, process-oriented approach. 

This will help your employees speak a common language and understand the specific processes they should follow to be effective in their Sales and Marketing roles. The Aspects included in the SMstudy® Guide are organized to align with the most typical job roles and career fields within Sales and Marketing.

• Save on training costs

The SMstudy training solution is a ready-to-use platform that saves you upfront costs in technology creation. It provides a range of courses and certifications with an option to deliver them in a flexible manner—classroom, online or mobile. We provide free certifications on six Aspects of Sales and Marketing to all of your employees and up to 50 percent discounts on other advanced-level certifications and course subscriptions.

Partnering with SMstudy not only grants you access to our Sales and Marketing certifications but also provides you access to other professional courses in our platform including Scrum, PMP, ITIL, Six Sigma and Prince2.

• Flexible learning solutions

SMstudy provides a range of learning solutions with best-delivery mechanisms for sales and marketing training through best-in-class mobile apps, high-end online courses and physical classroom study materials. Choose any combination of the aforementioned delivery mechanisms according to your business requirements and the training needs of your employees.

SMstudy courses include engaging videos, illustrative case studies, simulated exams and more. This ensures that your employees enjoy a fun and engaging learning experience—anytime, anywhere.

• Comprehensive portfolio of courses for all of your employees

As the Global Accreditation body for Sales and Marketing, SMstudy offers 30+ certifications for varying levels of experience on different Aspects of Sales and Marketing—Marketing Strategy (MS), Marketing Research (MR), Digital Marketing (DM), Corporate Sales (CS), Branding and Advertising (BA) and Retail Marketing (RM).

SMstudy contains the largest library of Sales and Marketing courses created by SMstudy and sourced from experts globally. This ensures that there is a relevant course and certification for all of your employees regardless of their job role and experience.

• Benefit from our state-of-the-art learning management system

SMstudy has built a state-of-the-art learning management system (LMS) for corporates to help them provide the best learning experience to their employees. The SMstudy LMS can be used for high-quality online course delivery, assigning private courses to students, providing homework assignments and monitoring student progress. As a result of its LMS, SMstudy can boast of the most effective managed learning programs available in the market today.

• Quick and hassle-free joining process

Joining as a Authorized Training Partner (A.T.P.) of SMstudy is quick and hassle-free—you can submit an application in a few minutes to become an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) with SMstudy.com and gain additional benefits. 


To know more about the certifications and the partnership, you can visit http://www.smstudy.com/Partners/Corporates

Channel Performance Measurement: A Close Overview

Channel performance measurement is a key activity when a sales organization employs different types of channel partners. In more complex multi-channel structures, it becomes even more important due to the number of people, processes, and roles involved. The performance of a channel can be measured across multiple dimensions. The parameters that are measured usually are effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, equity and profitability of the channel. 

The various channels have different purposes in the value chain; however, each task needs to support the overall corporate goals. As the number of channel partners increases, it is difficult to ensure that the channel partners are performing their specific roles as effectively as required. For example, the goal of a business might be to increase the number of strategic accounts. However, in order to gather maximum possible commission, channel partners might be engaged in getting the maximum number of accounts possible with total disregard towards prioritizing the acquisition of strategic accounts. It is therefore important to audit the channel partners and incentivize them for activities that are aligned with the corporate goals. The channel performance should also be judged on the ability to fulfill given tasks. A few carefully chosen metrics can give a good indication of the performance of each channel.
The channel performance measurement is primarily a four-step process.

1. Define the Sales Objectives
2. Determine Channel Performance Metrics
3. Set Channel Partner Targets
4. Manage Channel Performance

1. Define Sales Objectives

The first step in channel performance measurement is to define the sales objectives for the company. These objectives are outlined and discussed in sales meetings to ensure a shared understanding between members of the marketing and sales teams.
2. Determine Channel Performance Metrics

Evaluating the performance of a distribution channel depends largely on the agreed upon performance metrics. Choosing the right number and type of performance metrics can help to monitor and improve the performance of channel partners. These metrics provide an understanding of how well the channel partner is doing in reaching its performance targets.
Though it is possible to evaluate a channel on hundreds of performance metrics, this would make reporting and analysis of the performance a cumbersome job. When determining channel performance metrics, a key performance driver, such as sales or units sold, should be chosen to identify and measure the most important tasks. A series of performance metrics are then decided based on the key performance driver.
3. Set Channel Partner Targets

After overall sales objectives are defined, it is important to assign specific targets to each of the channel partners to ensure they are in alignment with the overall objectives. Properly set targets provide a benchmark to measure channel success, monitor performance, and take corrective action to meet expectations. Each channel partner has a specific role towards fulfilling the overall sales objectives. Performance targets should be set to reflect the channel partner’s contribution to the overall objectives
4. Manage Channel Performance
 
This is the final step in channel performance measurement. It uses the agreed upon goals, assigned performance targets, and identified performance metrics to manage channel performance on an on-going basis and to identify the performance shortfalls of the channel partners. During this step, management gains an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each channel. Management can then take corrective action to ensure efficient performance of the channel.
The success of a channel and its efficiency are determined by the efficiency of channel intermediaries in delivering goods and services to customers and the quality of services offered in the process. Developing a comprehensive marketing plan that provides clear and concise direction about marketing activities and strategy is critical to the organization's success.
To learn more about Channel Performance Measurement, visit www.SMstudy.com


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