What Sales Process Behavior Charts Can Tell You

Dear Readers, Thank you for the excellent remarks about what process behavior charts can tell you from last week’s blog post. For convenience, I have reproduced the image here (with interpretation below).

Figure 1 - Sales Process Behavior Charts

Looks like while they are closing, they are not also prospecting…and unfortunately I see B2Bs do this frequently. This is by far one of the single biggest headaches that drives CEOs crazy as it adds a degree of variability that hits home where it hurts…in cash flow.

Bingo!

Sales Production Bottleneck

In many companies, salespeople are required to be involved in everything, so they are the bottleneck. Read more

What Can You Tell From These Sales Process Behavior Charts?

Pictures are worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to measuring sales and marketing production.

Measuring Sales Production Correctly

Figure 1 below contains two process behavior charts showing production measurements from a B2B company’s sales process. The first shows the quantity of qualified opportunities generated per month. The second shows Read more

Why Is It So Hard to Create Improvements in the Sales Department?

Some people didn’t like the word “Easy” in last week’s blog post: “Six Easy Ways to Boost Your Company’s Sales Results.” For example, reader Tony Cole said:

“If it were easy then everyone would be doing it. … “Let’s address the issues of why companies, sales leaders, and salespeople fail to implement and execute basic fundamental sales processes or techniques, let alone the sophisticated process improvements you talk about here.”

I called Tony to find out more about what Read more

Are You Improving Your Selling System? (Or Repeating the Same Old Grind?)

Some people have a choice in the way they approach sales and marketing: They can work IN the production system, or ON it. Salespeople are inherently IN the system. Their job is to do the best they can to get prospects to a successful conclusion as effectively Read more

Quick Sales Productivity Boosts

If you are a salesperson and you need a productivity boost, there are lots of possibilities, such as better meeting preparation, more practice presenting, maintaining your relationships, and working to become more organized. However, what if your entire organization needs a sales productivity boost? What can an Read more

The Last Thing a Fish Discovers is Water

Last week’s blog post “Why People Are NOT Your Most Important Asset” created some strong reaction.

Here is an example: Michael, I was recently fired from my sales job, because I wasn’t on the road “cold calling” enough … Instead, I had been working to set up Google alerts for research as well as trigger events that Jill Konrath (www.sellingtobigcompanies.com) refers to. I was trying to set up an automated way of attracting and nurturing contacts through email, phone follow up, etc. They told me I was being fired for not doing the sales. It is frustrating enough to be told to do things you know don’t work any more. But, to get fired for trying something you know could work! It is just incredible. Your article touched all those things that companies still either don’t understand or don’t want to do…Do the research, create the value … all they want is more cold calls or send that proposal out … You pointed out the reasons why the sales process is messed up and how it needs to improve … that the whole company must organize around researching the market, creating value, etc. It must deal with the “whole process,” not just what salespeople do. It really gave me hope that maybe some of the old ways will be flushed out with this recession. By the way, I got lucky: I start a new job in two weeks. But I’ll be careful not to bring these new ideas to my new employer too soon…I need a job… Bob Smith (not his real name)

The exact same thing has happened to me, Bob. More than once, actually. Many employers today are stamping Read more

How to Generate and Sustain a 25% Increase in Sales Opportunities in 90 Days or Less with Sales Kaizen

by Michael Webb with Brian Carroll

Introduction

The current economic crisis only amplifies a hidden secret many companies struggle with: lead generation. Perhaps they don’t know how to generate leads, or they cannot get the support they need from the rest of the organization. Whatever Read more

Webinar Repeat Tuesday: How to Increase Your Margins 1% to 10%

Here is what some attendees said about last week’s webinar “How to Increase Margins 1% to 10% … by Building Negotiation into Your Sales Process:”

• John, executive, Ontario, Canada: “I’ll be able to align my sales team to a proactive negotiation process.”
• May Britt, executive, Norway: “I can incorporate new learnings into the all-Nordic Process Improvement training we are running this spring.”
• Cory, consultant, Los Angeles area: “I’ll evaluate and strategize the negotiation process more from a tactical perspective now.”
• David, consultant, San Francisco Bay area: “It was very helpful in terms of (1) Brian’s specific suggestions on negotiation and (2) using sales kaizen to systematically improve the negotiating methods at a company.”

Unfortunately, we also had some technical issues with the sound and phone number. So, even though the webinar was completed and will be up on the website Sunday evening (making over 9 hours of videos!) we’re planning a live redo for members and registered attendees only:

“How to Increase Margin 1% to 10%

Read more

How to Develop Qualification Criteria Guidebook Launch

Make Salespeople 25% More Productive in 90 Days or Less

Michael Webb and Bill Bentley explain their discoveries around sales qualification criteria. It turns out that the concept of sales qualification has a lot in common with the concept of quality – if you define your qualification criteria in terms of observable characteristics. This presentation outlines the foundation Read more

How to Make Salespeople 25% More Productive in 90 Days or Less

You probably have salespeople working overtime right now on deals that will be:

• bad business if you win them (too much trouble, not worth the revenue)
• lost to a competitor
• lost to no decision

If you’ve been around professional sales organizations for a long time, you already know that poor salespeople ignore qualification criteria; good salespeople, and Read more