Telltale Signs Your Sales and Finance Teams Are at Odds With Each Other

Most companies have credit policies in place so that the company doesn’t get into bed with unreliable, late paying customers. When customers pay late, that puts a strain on your own company’s cash flow and makes it harder to pay your bills on time. But the reality is that few salespeople know a credit policy even exists, let alone what factors come into play when deciding to approve or reject sales deals. 

Just think about that for a minute. If a credit policy exists and includes specific criteria that could cause a sales deal to be rejected in the 11th hour, wouldn’t you want to know that information? I’d say yes. What makes this scenario even worse is that not knowing about the credit policy means that you’ll end up spending a good amount of time chasing after prospects – all the while thinking they would make a great customer for the business – only to find out from the finance team that they have a poor business credit score and repeatedly pay their bills late and then get rejected.  

While your finance team knows these are red flags, you probably don’t because you don’t have access to data about their financial health and the finance team hasn’t shown you why you need this financial data upfront – so you can improve your chances of having your sales deals approved. The more sales deals you get approved, the more revenue you generate for the business and the more commission you earn. Plus, you’ll be seen as a high performing salesperson and will be able to increase your earning potential down the line. It’s a win-win.

Working in sales is a tiring and grueling job. You spend months pursuing a prospect, working it at every angle to bring the deal to the finish line. That’s hundreds of hours of your time that can make or break your ability to hit your sales target every month. The last thing you want is to do all that work only to have the deal rejected by your finance/credit control team without any explanation. Frustrating, right? 

This is where it’s important that the finance/credit control and sales team speak to each other openly. As I said earlier, it’s vital that the sales team understands what the credit policy is and what factors are considered when approving/rejecting a deal. But that’s just the starting point. 

The finance/credit control team needs to communicate openly with the sales team when deals are rejected. Explain to them why the deal was rejected. For example, if a potential customer had a poor business credit score and filed for bankruptcy in the past, these red flags may have caused the finance/credit control team to reject the deal – even if it was for a high dollar amount. If that’s the case, it’s the finance team’s job to inform the salesperson of these reasons and to walk them through how to use credit risk data at the very start of their sales process so they don’t end up wasting time on risky leads.

Now that I’ve covered some of the telltale signs that your sales and finance teams are at odds with each other, I think it’d be useful to give you an example of what it looks like when both teams are working and communicating harmoniously with each other. 

So, I chatted with one of our account executives, Leighton Weston, who has worked with major US brands across a variety of industries to help them mitigate their business risks with credit risk data. He shares his first-hand experience working with organizations that have extraordinarily strong alignment and collaboration between the sales and finance teams – and how it helped the companies overcome financial challenges and build a path to sustainable growth.

“As this blog explains, friction between the sales and finance team is quite common in organizations. But I’ve been incredibly lucky to have witnessed the opposite in some organizations – where the sales and finance teams have been in lock step with each other – communicating frequently, helping the other team understand what factors are taken into consideration when approving/rejecting deals and why those factors are important. When this happens, the results are pretty spectacular – and you’ll see the credit policy become fully understood and endorsed by both teams. 

That’s why it’s important for both teams to have an open mind, be keen to understand each team’s respective goals, priorities and challenges and most importantly, to ask questions often and early. As a salesperson myself, I can tell you that waiting until the 11th hour after you’ve put in hundreds of work to pursue a prospect (and close the deal) isn’t just going to be a pain in the you know what, it’s going to end up costing you both personally and professionally because you’ll lose revenue for the business and your own commission on that deal. And as a salesperson, I can also say that sales teams would appreciate more transparent communication and ongoing training from the finance team to fully understand all the different risk factors that factor into their decisions, why each factor has been included in the credit policy and how those risks influence the company’s cash flow and ability to grow long-term. The more we as salespeople know and understand about these risks, the more likely we’ll be to ask important questions up front with prospects and run credit risk checks early.”