Finance people should understand sales just as salespeople should understand finance. They don’t need to be experts in the other’s domain.

It doesn’t need to be difficult or overly complicated. Here are the basics of how to get started:

1. Review leadership’s strategic plan with functional leaders, including sales.
2. Translate the strategic plan into top-level operating/financial goals.
3. Emphasize where the top-level operating/financial goals appear in the financial statements. This may include discussion around margin, product mix, EBITDA, free cash flow, and net income.
4. Illustrate how core activities of the sales team and others drive these top-level operating/financial goals in the financial statements.

This can be done with a small family business or a big company. I went through this same exercise months ago with leaders at a $13 billion corporation.

Finance shouldn’t be a scary topic for salespeople and ops people if FP&A has done a decent job illustrating connections. Working too much in silos is a lost opportunity.

Watch the walkthrough video. 👆