I remember very vividly when I first began the consulting business…and was not doing that well. I’d been pitching a relatively large prospect on the benefits of my background, processes and systems of what we today would call “lean manufacturing”. Working my way through the maze of Purchasing, Quality and Manufacturing Managers, I finally engineered a meeting with the CEO for the final pitch. Although I never did receive an order for manufacturing process improvement, he and I hit it off during that meeting such that we went on to develop a multi year relationship building the business and finally selling it very successfully to 3Com. I had became his coach, and he had became a very valuable partner.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Sales Optimization, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management
It’s Wednesday morning, and I, just like every other salesperson, am out on the road focused on sales for the quarter. It actually looks like a very good next couple of weeks with a proposal going out today, numbers of client assignments scheduled plus a deal transaction narrowing down to a close, and a large number of other activities in the funnel to keep me and the boys busy for a while. So, why are there questions about selling rummaging around in my head this morning?
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales effectiveness, improved sales management
Doc Rivers was quoted on ESPN where he was asked about his career in coaching the Celtics, and he described it as “a miserable joy”, and anyone who has been a student of either pro basketball or became caught up in the most recent excitement of March Madness, knows exactly what this means. The cliffhanger of Duke’s final win in the NCAA championships this year, and the stunning upset of Kansas’ unexpected loss a couple of weeks ago bring all coaches to the point of either tearing their hair out- the misery- or basking in the glory of the final win and its accompanying praise -the joy.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management
Tuesday, 4:30 AM
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management
The good news is that, as a firm, we’ve had a very busy Q1. With budgets in place, almost every customer we’ve worked with in the first quarter held either business or sales planning sessions to think through and create detailed tactical plans. In some cases, these plans focused on Q1, while the majority of them typically detailed just the first half of the year. Only in a few companies, did we bother to define the second half of the year except to note the general financial plan assumptions that led up to the 2010 budget.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management
The issue of “power” was front and center with me all this weekend. With two violent winter storms converging, the coast of NH was slammed with hurricane level, sheering winds and three days of flooding rain. All of which resulted in the loss of power at the house from Thursday through Saturday.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management
As everyone knows who reads these posts, in my “spare time”, I teach business planning and marketing as a lecturer at MIT and as a marketing professor at Tufts. I love the work and student involvement, plus it provides an excellent opportunity to integrate concepts into the real world of sales and marketing tactics, both for my students and for our companies at the firm since often they become case studies in the classes.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales effectiveness
This column this month is a continuation of the thought process from January’s “Hawks & Doves” discussion that drew a large number of comments. Hopefully, this will do the same since it is meant to be of a “Sales Tips” piece.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, selling, selling skills, strategic planning
Coyotes & Other Critters
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, selling, selling skills, strategic planning
