Many of our followers’ salespeople promote an eight-minute briefing when they first engage with prospective customers. Well, I’ve created a video demonstration of an eight-minute briefing—and you can watch it below. Why an Eight-Minute Briefing? First, I should stress that there’s nothing special about eight minutes. It could just as easily be six, or twelve.… “The power of the Eight-Minute Briefing (and a video demonstration)”
This is a must-watch interview for Industrial Distributors. In two short years, Emasal totally reengineered its entire front-of-house. Two years ago they had 6 regional offices, each with its own sales and customer service representatives. And, two years ago, salespeople were commissioned, semi-autonomous operators, doing a mix of field and telephone work. Today, Emasal has… “In the two years it took to centralize sales and customer service, this Central American distributor of packaging machines grew sales at a compound rate of 18%”
Here is a fun and super interesting interview with Devon Gillard. Devon is the CMO of F12.net Inc, which is headquartered in Alberta Canada. F12.net Inc is a fast-growing, private-equity-backed, Managed Service Provider. In short, that means that F12 enables mid-sized organizations to outsource their core technology infrastructure (software and—notably—hardware). As you can see from the… “F12.net Inc grows pipeline by 700% with only 20% of the sales headcount”
Legion Logistics’ growth had stalled at about $27m in annual revenues. It took just three short months to fix that problem. Today, requests-for-quotations (RFQs) are up from 5 to 40 a week and new accounts are up from 2–3 a month to 2–3 a week. My interview with Lacy Starling covers a lot of ground… “In three short months, Legion Logistics has gone from winning 2–3 new accounts a month to 2–3 a week!”
As I write, I’m flying back to LA after attending the Inside Sales Professionals annual conference in Chicago. Today, I presented The Death of Field Sales, an introduction to our inside-out approach to the design of the sales function. Here are my observations on state of the inside-sales community. The good First, inside sales is… “The future is inside sales. It’s just not your momma’s inside sales!”
If you listen only to Kirk Nelson’s first few words in the interview below, you’ll be missing out on one hell of a treat! Kirk starts the interview by assuring me that ARCA has an accurate sales funnel and a good understanding of what’s going on in the business. That’s good, right? But, where’s the… “The incredible ARCA journey: two-fifths the sales team; twice the sales”
If it’s true that sacred cows make the best hamburgers, then we’re in for quite a feast! I’ve chosen to close Part One of this book with a frontal assault on the juiciest bovine of all: the unassailable belief that salespeople should be paid commissions. And while I’m at it, I’ll take aim at bonuses,… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 6: The end of commissions, bonuses and other artificial management stimulants”
Alejandro Céspedes wrote to me the other day with the following question: Hi Justin Just wanted to ask if you’ve designed a way of managing the sales budget of a company. In other words, how to review if the salespeople are meeting the budget or not. Most companies are affected by the end-of-the-month syndrome, and… “End-of-the-month syndrome and three fallacious assumptions”
A slow economy does not have to mean fewer orders As the economy slows, it’s likely that your firm’s order flow will slow too. But, does it really need to? For you to answer this question in the affirmative, two conditions need to be in place: Your share-of-market needs to be considerable Your sales function… “A strategy for coping with tough economic times”
Yesterday was a day of firsts for me. First time in Latin America. First time presenting via a translator (it worked effortlessly). And first time I’ve tipped more than $1,000 in a restaurant! (1,000 pesos equals just $US0.50.) But there was one experience yesterday that I’m well and truly used to: the reaction of workshop… “Why should selling be optional?”
