Press Release:
Whitepaper: Collaboration between Sales and Service
New whitepaper for businesses: The collaboration between sales and service – a critical success factor for sustainable growth
Bad Honnef, September 5, 2019. Award-winning interim executives Peter Kuhle, expert in customer-oriented service, and Siegfried Lettmann, expert in sales transformation, shed light on the far-reaching significance of the collaboration between sales and service for sustainable positive business development in their jointly created whitepaper. They provide entrepreneurs with an insightful overview of the challenges and opportunities they have experienced and overcome in numerous companies in their practice.
The current market environment is characterized by rapid change, short product cycles, and significant advancements, especially due to digitalization. At the same time, increasingly high customer demands require perfectly aligned customer journeys. The optimal collaboration between sales and service is therefore crucially important. Today, it is no longer sufficient to present “suitable” offerings to customers. The company that offers the best service packages will survive. This demands harmony between sales and service – together and closely aligned, these areas form an important part of the value proposition.
Based on their experience, the two experts provide answers to the following questions in their whitepaper:
- Why is the collaboration between sales and service the key to sustainable success?
- Which customer expectations does service actually need to fulfill?
- Why are digitalization and sales transformation the foundation for new success?
- What does this have to do with leadership and company culture?
- How can one efficiently design the interfaces between sales and service, always with the optimal focus on the customer?
As an expert in customer-oriented service, Peter Kuhle brings diverse experience from assignments and leadership positions at companies such as Unitymedia, Liftstar Group, and the Telekom Group to his clients. With regard to the whitepaper, he emphasizes that “only through well-coordinated internal and cross-disciplinary collaboration can we truly present a united front externally and ensure a seamless customer experience.” Kuhle also sees room for improvement in terms of customer focus in many companies.
Co-author Siegfried Lettmann, interim manager for sales transformation projects, draws on his practical and leadership experience from a variety of successful assignments and leadership positions at companies such as Miele and Kärcher. A successful collaboration between sales and service has become a necessity for building lasting customer loyalty: “The goal is not just ‘satisfied customers,’ as they will silently and unnoticed switch to the competition as soon as it offers a better value proposition. Nowadays, the goal can only be enthusiastic customers.”
Interim management is now a recognized instrument for actively addressing changes in companies, including in the areas of sales and service. The umbrella organization Deutsches Interim Management (DDIM), the leading industry and economic association for professional interim management, promotes the development of interim managers and thus makes an important contribution to providing the economy with a flexible resource that ensures the future of companies.
Dr. Marei Strack, Chairwoman of DDIM, welcomes the collaboration between Kuhle and Lettmann: “This is how interim managers operate. They are open to exchange, they recognize that ‘one plus one is greater than two,’ and they always look beyond their own perspectives. It is evident that experienced practitioners are at work here, who have learned that modern success strategies must be designed cross-disciplinarily and aligned with the customer. I am excited about such initiatives.”
Interested parties can obtain the whitepaper “Collaboration between Sales and Service” (German version only) by Peter Kuhle and Siegfried Lettmann as a free PDF file on the authors’ websites and on the DDIM website.