Performance Incentives – Risks of being counter productive
Daniel Pink gave a brilliant talk on TED about the mismatch between “what science knows and what business does”. A related post on his blog claims that “Money cant buy you performance”. Some questions that he raised in my mind: When we try to implement scalable business processes, are we trying to “dumb-down” the work to a “mechanical” level? Do performance metrics measure only “mechanical” performance and do we run the risk that...
Read MoreLead Qualification – Resolving the conflict between sales and marketing
Product designers learned years ago that they’d save time and money if they consulted with their colleagues in manufacturing rather than just throwing new designs over the wall. The two functions realized it wasn’t enough to just coexist—not when they could work together to create value for the company and for customers. You’d think that marketing and sales teams, whose work is also deeply interconnected, would have discovered something similar. As a rule, though, they’re separate...
Read MoreCommunication Problems are actually Process Design Problems
When working in teams, small slip-ups and sometimes big goof-ups are often justified by “communication problems”. Justin Roff-Marsh, proponent of his highly effective Sales Process Engineering methodology that incorporates the techniques from Theory of Constraints into the sales process – has written an excellent article on his Sales Process Engineering blog, where he explains “Why the term ‘communication problem’ insults your team members and retards the performance...
Read MoreCRM does not improve sales performance
Dave Hurlbrink writes how conventional CRM or SFA applications are not designed to serve the needs of a sales person. The value proposition of a “360 degree view of your prospect/customer” is not what the sales person needs to improve his performance. A sales person is already juggling with multiple opportunities in the pipeline that are fighting for attention and that take long to close. What the sales person needs is a way to simplify the information and make it actionable. And he needs...
Read MoreB2B Marketing – a four-point transformation strategy
Laura Ramos – VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research focuses on effective lead management, lead nurturing, sales and marketing integration, the development of targeted messaging and winning value propositions, installed base marketing, and the use of digital media and the Web to build customer engagement. Laura writes about her recently published report that recommends a four-point strategy to B2B marketers to avoid becoming obsolete. She advises against merely increasing marketing...
Read MoreChallenges in scaling up sales
Are you facing these challenges in scaling up your sales process? High cost of sales, low margins Lack of clear product/offer differentiation Complexity in mapping customer requirements to product/offer Long sales cycle with unpredictable outcomes No consistent sales performance, difficult to forecast High level of stress in sales team, high turnover You can make/provide as much as you can sell In short, if scaling up sales is the major bottleneck to scaling up your business, then here are...
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