I just had a call from a client who owns a make-to-order manufacturing firm (building materials) in New Zealand. Chris was agitated because he had just realised that, last week, across his sales team, 20 appointment slots had gone unfilled, due either to cancellations or a failure to schedule appointments. He had calculated that these… “Chris gets it!”
Years ago, I remember consulting to a small printing firm. As is often the case in job shops (make-to-order manufacturers), estimation was the system constraint. Obviously, this wasn’t a good thing. It meant that customers wanted to buy printing; that production had the capacity to fulfill their orders; but that estimating was limiting the flow… “Why accurate estimating may be costing you sales”
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’ve got tuberculosis!’”
It’s a conversation I’ve had time and time again. JR-M: Does that advertising campaign work? Marketing manager: It’s a little hard to say. JR-M: How do you mean? Marketing manager: Well, the phone doesn’t ring, but at least we’re getting our name out there. There they are, those nine terrible words: but at least we’re… “The nine most terrible words any marketing manager can possibly utter … and how you can avoid the need ever to use them”
[Note: the following post concludes with a challenge. I hope you’ll consider proposing a solution!] I can’t stand it anymore. If I hear one more (otherwise intelligent) person mention the concept of a ‘profitable customer’, I’m going to scream! The concept of a ‘profitable customer’ is as big a nonsense as that of a ‘profitable… “Is there such a thing as ‘customer profitability’?”
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’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”
I spent a couple of hours with a Sydney-based insolvency practitioner last week. He visited to request assistance with his marketing. (Yes it’s okay, Ballistix is still solvent!) Because this was my first meeting with a potential client I waited a full 10 minutes before challenging the viability of his business model. Fortunately, my guest’s… “Baptism by fire: a sustainable competitive advantage or else!”
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!”
Here’s a potentially lethal sales process engineering error that we’ve made a number of times; and one that many of our subscribers have made — and are making right now — too! The error is to attempt to increase opportunity flow to match your salesperson capacity. (It sounds innocuous enough but, like I said, it’s… “The number-one way to handicap your Industrial Sales Process Reengineering project”
