A Departmental Collaboration Guide, your essential resource for understanding and optimising your partnerships across your organisation.

Cross-Function CX Engagement > Sales

Sales

The Sales department is responsible for generating revenue by identifying, qualifying, and closing deals with new and existing customers. Their mission is to grow the customer base and achieve sales targets while representing the company's value proposition in the marketplace.

Key Goals & Priorities

Achieve quarterly and annual revenue targets.
Increase market share in key strategic segments.
Improve sales efficiency and reduce the length of the sales cycle.
Enhance lead-to-customer conversion rates.
Increase the average deal size or customer lifetime value.

What Sales Needs from Customer Experience (CX)

Customer Insights & Feedback: Actionable insights from existing customers about why they chose us, what they value most, and their early product/service experiences. This helps Sales refine their pitch and value proposition to better resonate with prospects.
Journey Mapping Contributions: Clear visibility of the post-sale journey, particularly the onboarding and initial support stages, to help them set accurate customer expectations from the outset.
Advocacy for Customer Needs: CX can amplify customer feedback regarding product gaps or feature requests that, if addressed, could remove significant barriers to closing deals.
Process Improvement Suggestions: Recommendations for a smoother handoff process from Sales to Onboarding or Customer Success, ensuring customer information is transferred effectively and the customer feels a seamless transition.
Data & Analytics: Data on which customer segments have the highest lifetime value and lowest churn, helping Sales to prioritise and focus on acquiring the most profitable and loyal customers.

How CX Can Engage & Collaborate Effectively

Regular Communication Channels: Establish a monthly "Voice of the Customer" sync with the sales leadership to share key feedback themes, churn reasons, and success stories that can be used in sales conversations.
Joint Initiatives & Projects: Collaborate on designing and refining the customer onboarding process to ensure the promises made during the sales cycle are realised in the customer's early experience.
Data Sharing & Reporting: Provide the Sales team with dashboards showing CSAT/NPS scores and qualitative feedback from new customers, highlighting correlations between satisfaction and the sales process they experienced.
Cross-Functional Training/Workshops: Offer "Customer-Centric Selling" workshops that equip the Sales team with insights into customer pain points and success outcomes, helping them to sell solutions rather than just features.
Attending Their Meetings: Request to sit in on weekly sales pipeline meetings to understand current challenges and listen for opportunities where CX data could help overcome objections or strengthen a proposal.
Active Listening & Empathy: Proactively seek to understand the pressures of sales targets and market conditions. Frame CX initiatives as enablers of sales success, not as blockers.

Key CX Touchpoints & Intersections

Lead Qualification
Initial Sales Discovery Calls
Product Demonstrations
Proposal and Negotiation Stage
Sales Handoff to Onboarding/Service
Post-Purchase Follow-up
Renewal and Upsell Conversations

Success Metrics (Shared or CX Impacted)

Win Rate / Conversion Rate
New Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Early-stage Customer Churn (first 90 days)
New Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Questions to Consider for Collaboration

"What are the most common objections or reasons for losing a deal that are related to the customer experience or product features?"
"How can we better arm the sales team with customer success stories and data to help them prove our value proposition?"
"What information would help you better identify and prioritise leads that are most likely to become long-term, successful customers?"

Google Sites

Report abuse