What are the key drawbacks to having [an] operations-led translation company? 

Great sales management in the language services industry is more crucial than ever.  I got to wondering what prevents LSPs from achieving the consistent and sustained sales growth they desire.  I came up three initial questions that I decided ask my colleague, Thomas Edwards.  Thomas has extensive industry sales management experience and I was curious to hear his answers.  I’ve decided to share his responses with you in a series of posts, now focusing on my third question:

What are the key drawbacks to having [an] operations-led translation company?  How to transition to sales led (balanced approach) from [a] managerial point of view.

• Many organizations in our language services industry are operations-led. It is the traditional chicken and the egg (or ox and the cart) of which one comes first. Is it better to be operations-focused or sales-focused? Is it better to close the sale of a new set of languages or new type of project and then, figure out how to perform the work? Or is it better to prepare the factory first by ensuring the organization has a particular competency and then go to market with that?

• Many salespeople tend to throw a net off the back of the boat and see what they come up with. This happens when the sales team is not given clear instructions or goals of what type of customer is defined by the organization as the “ideal customer” and therefore the type of prospect they should aim at targeting.

In order to come up with a more balanced approach, it is recommended to give a goal and define an ideal customer profile as a company. Identify the type of work that won’t cause the organization to have to reinvent the wheel all the time. At the same time, insist that the sales team do not come up with “surprises”, crazy low rates, or bring in all the time the obscure languages no other competitor can or want to handle. As long as the objectives are clear, the chances of issues are reduced. At the same time, we must keep up with customer needs and if technology, language requirements or types of projects change over time. It is OK. Embrace the change and remain flexible and do the occasional new type of a new project. It will enable to remain relevant as a supplier and grow. The only thing is not to forget to make sure your sales team give you as much of a heads-up, and also does not close a new type of business without getting operations and sales management involved first.

A quarterly or yearly meeting is a nice way to re-align expectations and highlights each other’s areas of expertise – as well as a good forum to collectively define the Ideal Customer profile. This can be done in person or remotely through video conference, where all departments of the company meet and get a chance to interact and learn from and about one another.