In her third term as Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher famously said,”… there’s no such thing as society.” She went on to say, “There are [just] individual men and women and there are families.” (Thatcher was responding to a special interest group that was casting its problems as those of society.) A few days ago I… “There’s no such thing as The Market”
I often find myself asking that question: do you really need all those branch offices? Think what happens when organisations implement our method. Salespeople don’t need an office anymore: they’re always in the field performing appointments. The scheduling of salespeople is centralised (that’s sales coordinators). There’s a whole bunch of reasons why you mustn’t *ever*… “Do you really need all those branch offices?”
So many service providers treat it as a given: that their businesses are fundamentally different from those that sell physical products. On the surface, it seems an innocuous enough assumption. There must be an essential difference between the sales processes of firms that sell physical products and those that sell intangible services. When I’m asked… “The essential difference between product and service companies: nothing at all!”
I’m often told by potential clients – in answer to the question, ‘on what basis do you compete for customers?’ – that ‘customer service is our point of difference’. In almost all cases service is NOT a competitive advantage. In fact, this answer is normally a tacit admission of a complete absence of one! Let’s… “Customer service is NOT a competitive advantage!”
In recent times, it’s become fashionable to talk about ‘internal customers’. The thinking is that everyone in our organisation is a customer service person. If we don’t serve direct customers, we serve internal customers, where these internal customers might be other divisions, co-workers, management, channel partners etc. While this reasoning may form the basis of… “There’s no such thing as an internal customer”
I’m often asked by clients how to cope with the ‘appeal to brand equity’ made frequently by (some) marketing people (particularly those selling advertising) in defense of promotional activities. (To review my position on ‘brand equity as a management metric’ you might like to read this article. The marketer’s position is typically as follows: We… “Countering the ‘promote to build brand equity’ argument”
Question: What’s the primary driver of conversion rate? Answer: In most cases, it’s not sales skill! The primary driver is most often what we call Opportunity Cycle Time: the time it takes to close an opportunity. What that means is that, if you want to improve conversion rates, you should look for a way to… “Why sales training can decrease conversion rates!”
Why mysticism and marketing are incompatible bedfellows Imagine the reaction of your local doctor if you presented yourself with a cough and a slight fever and proceeded to inform her that you were suffering from tuberculosis! Can you imagine her obediently writing a prescription for Isoniazid and reporting your bad news to the relevant health… “Doctor, I think I have tuberculosis!”
