I have a hunch that Amazon will wreak havoc within industrial distribution in the not-too-distant future. My theory is that they will shortly be able to combine the web smarts and the product range of McMaster-Carr with the availability of Grainger’s and Fastenol’s vendor-managed inventory (VMI) installations. Obviously, web smarts and range are easy problems… “Industrial distribution: a scary prediction!”
I’m not suggesting we’re about to have a nuclear winter. I think it’s more likely that the industrial sector is about to emerge from one. But here’s my four-step strategy for survival anyway. Let’s assume that you’re a typical industrial organization with a traditional commissioned, semi-autonomous sales force. STEP ONE. Centralize customer service. I don’t… “A strategy for surviving a nuclear winter!”
Management should NOT attempt to impose a fixed sequence of tasks upon salespeople. An attempt to do so will decrease salespeople’s productivity and damage the integrity of information ultimately extracted from CRM.
Have you ever heard a salesperson boast that if they can just get face-to-face with a prospect, their odds of winning the deal jump to 50%? Of course, you have. Pretty much all salespeople make this claim! If we analyze this statement, we discover that it contains an observation that is (most likely) roughly correct.… “Face-to-face visits: when the obvious conclusion is the wrong one!”
The next three chapters deal with opportunities: how to originate them and how to prosecute them. But, as you’ll notice from this chapter heading, we’re not navigating these big subjects in what would appear to be the logical order. There are two (very) important reasons why we’ll be talking about prosecuting opportunities before we talk… “The Machine > Part 2 > Chapter 8: Converting opportunities into sales”
The Holy Grail of technical sales: how to disentangle salespeople from production Whenever we work in a technical-sales environment, this – bar none – is the most valuable idea we bring to the table. Here’s the most obvious symptom of the problem: When salespeople make a technical sale, they inevitably become entangled with production. Their… “Achieving Success in Industrial Sales: Liberating Salespeople from Production Challenges”
It seems so obvious. If that team member has a Blackberry and a company car; if they call on customers and help resolve their problems; then they must be a salesperson, right? Well, maybe not! Sure, that’s the way things have traditionally been done: the person in the field is automatically the salesperson. But, in… “Why your field rep should not necessarily be your salesperson”
We don’t want salespeople writing proposals, simple as that! However, freeing them from proposal generation can be more difficult than it initially appears. The problem is not with minor or major opportunities — there’s an obvious approach for each. It’s the ones in the middle that are the issue! Let’s consider the extremes first. Minor opportunity… “Proposals: how to free your salespeople from them!”
We have disbelievers in our midst! Among our loyal flock of AdVerb subscribers there are those who profess to embrace our principles but who flout at least one of them conspicuously. I’m referring to those executives who claim to be Relationship-centric Marketing aficionados but who, nonetheless, invest their scarce promotional dollars in golf days, boxes… “Why there’s a silent ‘$’ in ‘Relationship: and why the integrity of your sales process depends upon it!”
Wastepaper baskets, the world over, are full of them. In fact, if there were ever a competition to judge the most self-indulgent of all business communications, the newsletter would have serious competition from only the corporate video for first place! A tragedy, when you consider that newsletters have the potential to be by far the… “The corporate newsletter: neglected for years, resurrected at last”
