At a Glance
- Sales and credit are structurally in tension—one paid to say yes and move, the other to say no and protect—and pretending otherwise is why cross-training fails.
- The standard ‘spend a day in each other’s shoes’ is tourism; it changes attitudes for a week and behavior not at all.
- What works is built on live deals, mutual dependency, and a shared metric—not empathy exercises.
- Secured Research found 57% of equipment finance firms cite sales–credit friction as a top-three drag on origination cycle time, and 63% have no shared metric tying the two functions to a common outcome.
Why the Two Functions That Need Each Other Most Resent the Exercise
Sales and credit are not misaligned by accident or personality; they are misaligned by design. One function is compensated to say yes and to move quickly, the other to say no and to protect the balance sheet. That tension is healthy—a shop where sales and credit agree on everything has a credit problem or a growth problem—but it makes the two the most likely pair in the building to resent being asked to understand each other.
