Over the last few weeks, I’ve written about customer service, trust, and why sales don’t begin—or end—at the handshake. What sits underneath all of those conversations is a truth many leaders are uncomfortable confronting:
Sales and customer service are not frontline functions. They are organizational outcomes.
Yet too many leaders still behave as if success lives solely with the person facing the customer. The salesperson, the account manager, the optician, the advisor. They are the most visible, so they carry the expectation—and often the blame.
The reality is that the person who enables the sale, protects the margin, ensures accuracy, or delivers customer satisfaction is often not the one at the front. It’s the team behind them. Training. Operations. Manufacturing. Quality. Logistics. Systems. Leadership. Culture.
When those elements are misaligned, no amount of frontline talent can compensate. When they are aligned, average interactions become exceptional experiences.This is where many organizations fall short. They talk about teamwork as a cultural ideal but fail to design it into their strategy. They demand results without investing in enablement. They celebrate individuals while ignoring the system that makes success repeatable.
Even the best player will miss opportunities in a broken system. Talent doesn’t fail in isolation — leadership does, when it forgets that sales and service are team sports.
That belief is central to how Rochester Optical operates and why so many partners choose to work with us. We don’t just care about our customers — we care deeply about your customers.
At Rochester Optical, teamwork isn’t a leadership slogan or a quarterly initiative. It’s a day-to-day commitment shared by everyone in the organization. Every role is part of the solution. Every department owns the outcome. Every decision is measured against the same promise: to do the very best by you and by the patients you serve.
The person you speak with may be the face of the relationship, but the value you experience comes from the collective effort behind them. Sales execution, service reliability, turnaround times, quality, and trust are not accidents — they are the result of aligned teams delivering consistently.
That’s the difference between a vendor and a true partner.
Sustainable success doesn’t come from heroic individuals carrying the weight alone. It comes from organizations that build teamwork into their strategy and accountability into their culture.
Here’s the question every leader — and every customer — should be asking:
Are you relying on the person at the front to carry the experience, or are you partnering with a team that takes collective responsibility for delivering on every promise?
Because when teamwork is real, customers feel it.
And when it’s not, no handshake can hide it.
Stuart Jolly FBDO
VP of Business Strategy & Sales
Rochester Optical Manufacturing Company
