From time to time, I come across managers who battle valiantly and unflinchingly to accomplish what appears to be downright impossible. To their credit, these noble individuals manage to notch up occasional successes! I even see entire businesses that owe their existence to the belief that, with enough passion, determination and brute force, miracles can… “On pushing string uphill”
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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!”
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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!”
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Whose responsibility, I wonder, is client retention? Most organisations believe it’s the salesperson’s. Consequently, many salespeople spend a disproportionate amount of their time on account management. ‘Account management’ is a polite way of referring to a process that involves driving from client to client, drinking coffee and talking about the football. In the US, they… “Client retention: whose responsibility?”
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It’s often claimed that there are fundamental differences between major- and minor-account selling. Obviously, we’re not interested in the ‘selling’ here, so much as in the ‘sales process’. Here are some thoughts on this issue. If a minor opportunity is one that you can win in a single appointment, then a major opportunity is just… “Some thoughts on major-account selling”
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At one of our public roundtables this morning (in Sydney), we discussed the relationship between the potential client’s buying process and the organisation’s opportunity-management process. It’s an interesting insight, I think. The potential client’s buying process could be characterised as follows: The potential client suffers pain of some kind — but resolves (consciously or unconsciously)… “The buying process versus the opportunity-management process”
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When I insist that Sales Coordinators — and never Salespeople — should make follow-up calls, there’s always a howl of protest from Salespeople. “What about the relationship?” is the instinctive response, followed by, “but Sales Coordinators don’t have technical skills — or sales skills”. Of course we can immediately discount the instinctive response (Executives have PA’s… “Why salespeople should NEVER perform telephone follow-up”
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