How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business

Getting your sales team on board with your strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes argues. After all, the engine of many businesses is a strong sales core.

But aligning your strategy with sales isn’t just about communicating your ideas effectively. You have to hire carefully and use smart incentives to guide selling behavior.

“The issue is aligning actual selling behaviors. And it is about behaviors. Business is a performance art. It’s not about good ideas,” Cespedes tells IdeaCast host Sarah Green Carmichael.

Key topics include: sales, hiring, compensation, communication, performance management, strategic planning, innovation, and leadership development.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Does Your Sales Team Know Your Strategy? (October 2014)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast.
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org