If your business is any more complex than a lemonade stand, it’s likely that you do not need (and should not have) a unified, organization-wide workflow. But what you should have are unified inboxes within each department.
This article was first published on Thomasnet.com. You can read the original here. Your salespeople are NOT short of leads! If you hear a crazy idea often enough, there’s a danger that you’ll come to passively accept it — particularly if it’s on the periphery of your primary interest area. Some of these ideas (think, astrology)… “Fuelling Growth: The abundance of leads in industrial sales”
This article was first published on Thomasnet.com. You can read the original here. If you make revenue the responsibility of your sales department, you will handicap the growth of your organization. If you want your organization to grow, operations should be responsible for revenue and your sales department should focus exclusively on new business. Before… “Revenue Should Always Be the Responsibility of Operations, Never Sales”
Welcome to Part 2! Here’s where we dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s. We’ll be talking about roles, workflows, campaigns, technology and much more. But I don’t think we should be satisfied to examine these building blocks in a vacuum. After all, Part 2 is all about practice, not theory. Accordingly, it’s… “The Machine > Part 2 > Chapter 7: Formulating a plan”
Executives who encounter SPE for the first time will often ask if it is applicable in all situations. The answer to this question, not surprisingly, is no. Few theories – if any – can legitimately claim to be valid in all circumstances. However, before we offer-up our organization’s uniqueness as a get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s worth… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 5: Three variations on the standard model”
In most discussions of sales, the greater organization doesn’t rate a mention. This is more than an idle curiosity. The fact that we traditionally consider the sales function in isolation is likely to be an admission of a fundamental flaw in the design of sales – as well as the cause of many of the… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 4: The machine within the machine”
Our first order of business is to address two questions that have the potential to derail this discussion. The issue is not that these questions expose weaknesses in Sales Process Engineering (SPE). The issue is that these questions stand in the way of our discussion even getting started! Considering the radical nature of the change… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 2: Four key principles (and how to win a boat race)”
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”
Late last night I was in conference with a potential client in South Africa (I’m in Australia, right now). Towards the end of our conversation, he asked if I thought much market intelligence could be gleaned from customer surveys. I answered (almost instinctively), data, yes; but, intelligence, no. When pressured for a more coherent answer,… “Customer surveys: data, yes; intelligence, no”
Your Director of Sales should be charged with the responsibility for maximizing sales, right? Well, maybe not! If he or she is, it might be worth reflecting on what this says about how your critical business functions are resourced. Let’s assume (for simplicity) that your business consists of just two basic functions: Sales Production Ask… “If you tell your team to ‘maximize sales’ that may be a tacit admission of a flaw in the design of your business!”
