One Small Step Can Change Your Life

The Kaizen Way

People generally get a lot more chances in life than they realize. Everyone struggles with challenges and problems. The trick is to see beyond the surface appearance to the huge opportunities that may be hidden underneath. Dr. Robert Maurer has written a Read more

How Should We Transition to a Proper Sales Process?

Often, people write me to ask for assistance launching sales process initiatives:

“I am trying to learn and introduce a Six Sigma Selling system into my company – My boss has asked me to speak to companies similar to ours who have made a successful transition …”

The first concern I have on hearing a request like this is “What, exactly, do they mean when they say ‘Six Sigma Selling System’?” Not many people use such terms. Many sales Read more

5 Whys Applied to Why Companies Don’t Get Results from Sales Training

Last week, on the customer collective website, Dave Brock and Christian Maurer drilled into an interesting issue: Why don’t companies get the results they expect from sales training? (Sales Managers, Use it or Lose It, by Dave Brock)

The 5 Whys Applied to Sales Training

Dave pointed out that when sales managers didn’t coach salespeople in the use of the tools and templates that came with the training, there was no way the training could have an effect. Christian Maurer picked up the trail Read more

The Hidden Obstacle to Improving Sales Performance: Systems Thinking

Last week’s blog post, “Why Is It So Hard to Create Improvements in the Sales Department?” listed six examples of companies who tried and failed to improve sales results. All shared the same root cause. Read more

What Is Operational Excellence in Sales and Marketing?

by Michael J. Webb (with Robert Ferguson) (pdf of this article) A reader from Microsoft recently asked me an interesting question: “What are the key parameters which define Operational Excellence in a sales and marketing organization?” I like the question, because Read more

What is Six Sigma… and Why Should Marketing and Sales Managers Care?

Michael J. Webb, Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. Origionally published in Marketing Times Summer 2005 Subsequently published in Marketing Watchdog Journal, August 2005 (pdf of this article) Six Sigma is a funny name for a serious way of boosting marketing and sales performance. It’s already transformed manufacturing in hundreds of companies, and it is now doing the same in marketing and sales in companies such as Bank of America, Dell, General Electric, HSBC, Service Master, Johnson & Johnson, Standard Register, Sun Microsystems, Xerox, and many more. To apply Six Sigma to marketing and sales in your company, you’ll probably need to think in new ways. With Six Sigma, you base decisions on measurement and analysis of activities and results, then improve the activities to improve the results. Believe it or not, that’s generally not how marketing and sales are now managed (with one exception, which I’ll discuss). This article explains the basics of applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales. As it turns out, Six Sigma practitioners have the same goal as marketers and sellers: to find more profitable ways of giving customers what they want. Creating Value We all know that good marketing and selling gets other people to take the actions we want them to take. The challenge is in figuring out Read more

The Role of the CEO in the Sales Process

by Michael J. Webb (pdf of this article) Many CEOs see themselves as chief revenue officer (especially in tech companies) or at the least feel very consumed by this challenge. Many have Read more

SPIF! Benefiting Your Company and Your Customer Simultaneously

I hate watching election results, don't you?

I mean really. To me it is just a grotesque orgy of misinformation. Don't bother me 'till its over. I'd rather focus on work. At least there I can pretty much tell what is the truth and what isn't.

This election year has been unusual as far as truth is concerned.

For example, Leslie and I were in line to vote today for 90 minutes. I kept showing her the comments people were making on Twitter. Some included links to today's newspaper articles, accompanied by dozens of "colorful" reader's comments, where those readers exposed their beliefs for all to see.

Finding insightful comments was difficult. Most were as raw, unfair, emotion laden, and even idiotic as I have ever seen anywhere. It is pretty sobering to realize what so many people believe.

So, the phone is now turned off, and I'm working – an area where not only does the truth matter, but it is something we can generally do something about.

Here's something good: I recommend that you check out Jill Konrath's Thursday teleseminar "Sales 2.0: Tap into Social Media to Drive Enterprise Sales" 

Jill is the author of "Selling to Big Companies" and an excellent source of information and guidance on sales skills. (And no, I did not receive anything for this message!)

Finally, don't forget about the www.saleskaizen.com teleseminar tomorrow at 3:00 Eastern time.

The response has been huge – well over 200 registrations so far.

I'm planning some big announcements (and an offer you can't refuse), so if you are not on the list, go sign up right now. www.saleskaizen.com

Michael Webb

November 4, 2008

——————————————————————————————

Benefiting Your Company and Your Customer Simultaneously

Years ago, I was a first-line sales manager at a business forms company. One January, my district manager presented the new company strategy. He excitedly explained the new slogan for the year, and described a different type of ideal prospect we should start looking for in our prospecting. There were some new product announcements. Then, he announced a sales contest with some pricey prizes if we exceeded quota, like gold watches, ski-mobiles, and expensive vacations.

We all went about our jobs with these new things in mind. We were already coming in on Saturdays, and working late during the week, so is not as if the contest suddenly made us start working harder. (I was even trying to increase our productivity using an Apple computer – but that was too far out for most corporate minds at the time.)

My team did well. We exceeded quota in some areas, not in others. At the end of the year, we didn't really have any more of those "ideal customers" than we had before.  

Net benefit to the company?

Pffft. One rookie got to take home a new barbeque pit. I won a fancy watch. Not much else changed inside the company. Nothing changed to improve our order-entry systems, our pricing strategies, or the holes in our product lines.  

Net benefit to customers?

Pffft. Pffft. Our customers were still frustrated around the same old problems they always had with us, like late deliveries and high prices.

A few years later I worked at a minicomputer company (MAI Basic Four). When their product was visibly better than that of competitors of the day, they were a high-flyer in the stock market. Salespeople were taught a transactional selling strategy: Find somebody shopping for a minicomputer and show them ours. Most of the time you could get an order. Good salespeople were making $100k or even $200k in those markets in the late seventies. No sales contest needed!

By the early eighties, however, their competitors had caught up. Computer hardware was being commoditized and our growth slowed dramatically.

Read more

Clarifying Things That Count: How to Use Qualification Criteria to Improve Your Salespeople’s Results

The primary reason why the scientific method works is that it relies on observable facts and data to drive clarity and specificity of language. In practice it means working with people to clarify specific aspects of reality so they can be counted.

Making Sales and Marketing More Visible and Measureable

Unfortunately, in sales and marketing Read more

Shifting from Sales Manager to Production Manager

The Sales Manager’s Role

Sales managers are miraculous people. Give them a pile of half-baked customer deals, and in a flash they can work through them to find the ones that can be closed and to make irresistible-sounding offers with deadlines attached. They know the territories, and are taught to think ahead Read more