Ideas
Is China An Opportunity Or Threat To Your Business?
We keep reading about the explosive (consistent double digit) growth in China, now the world’s second largest economy, overtaking Japan in 2010 and predicated to catch America is the next 10-15 years... more
An Early Definition of Salesmanship
What is the earliest definition of Salesmanship you have come across? What about this 18th Century quote about a London auctioneer... more
Getting In The Minds Of Salespeople
A Sales Director asked Father Christmas for the ability to really understand sales people... more
Four Sales Challenges That Will Only Get Worse In 2011
This year has been another challenging year for most B2B sales organisations... more
Five Common Failures In KAM Training
Any sales organisation worth its salt soon wrestles with the problem of key account management (KAM)... more
Focusing On Developing Your Competitive Advantage
As the old truism has it, ‘Give the people what they want and they will buy’; if you do that successfully and you do it better than other businesses making a similar offer you have competitive advantage... more
Ten Ways To Improve Your Call Centre Customer Service Scores
We all have to use the phone to talk to our bank, broadband provider, support service etc. How many of us do it with a glad heart?... more
How Successful Salespeople Are Great Time Managers
Time management is a perennial personal development need. Here in a couple of lines is the training remedy distilled... more
How Good Is Your Succession Planning?
Many organisations talk about succession planning (SP), a large majority simply work to an annual appraisal with added ‘widgets’... more
Why Are Some Organisations Still Struggling With CRM Adoption?
Given database ubiquity and technology literacy you would think sales organisations are now fully up to speed with their CRM... more
We Are At A Personal Technology Inflection Point – The Future Has Arrived (Again)
We have arrived at something of a Strategic Inflection Point. The internet now delivers sufficient bandwidth and ease of access to provide the web content we really want... more
How To Hard Wire Improved Sales Performance Into Your Organisation
Every business would like to improve its sales performance. That being the case, why do most sales organisations struggle to do anything more than just exhort their sales people to do better?... more
15 Ways To Identify A Mis-Managed Sales Organisation
1. Keeping a mediocre sales person in post who does not have the capability to improve because it’s easier than firing them and finding a better replacement... more
How Companies Are Forming Up, Two Years After The Recession Began
We thought this was an opportune time to look at the current market-place, two years after Lehman Brothers collapsed and we entered near economic meltdown... more
Is Didactic Sales Development Relevant In The 21st Century?
In our fast-changing age of diversity, technology and talent management, can a sales organisation continue with traditional didactic sales development “this is how you do it” style of training and gain any competitive advantage?... more
How Transferable Are Sales Processes Across Culture Barriers?
If you are part of a global or multi-national sales organisation, or simply work for a sales team that export around the world, you will have noticed that a sales process that works well in one culture may not be nearly as effective in a different culture... more
IQ, EQ or CQ – What Is The Best Predictor For Sales Success?
Most of us have heard about the debate between IQ and EQ and their relative importance for successful sales leaders... more
What About Starting Your Own Business? A Way Back To Employment Or To Escape A Job You Don’t Like
After dreaming about winning the lottery the next most popular lifestyle dream is working for yourself... more
Can You Future Proof Your Business By Making The Right Strategic Decisions?
In our work it’s fascinating to see where businesses have ended up and where they are thinking, or not thinking, of going... more
Two Views Of Facebook – Would You Be A Buyer Or Seller Based On What You Read Below?
We all know about how facebook is occupying a larger space in many peoples’ lives... more
What Does Success Look Like?
We’re frequently asked if there are any recurring characteristics that act as a ‘lightning conductor’ to revealing a company’s likely success... more
Rediscovering The SWOT Analysis
One on the tools that every budding business management student thinks they are familiar with is the SWOT analysis... more
Be Careful, Your Sales Attitude Can Seriously Damage Your Prospects
We all know about glass half empty, glass half full kind of people... more
What Kind Of Salesperson Works Most Effectively? Specialist Or Generalist? Hunter Or Farmer? Sales Animal Or Technician?
These different perspectives often inform recruitment and selection issues... more
Book Review: Innocent Drinks – Smoothie’s Done With Style
You know a company has got under (literally) the skin of its customers when they have a tattoo of the brand on their arm a la Harley Davidson... more
A Rave From The Grave – When Closing Techniques Were Almost An Art Form
The kind of pressure selling styles that came out of post war America took some time to take hold in the UK, but when they did, closing techniques became a specialist subject in themselves, reaching a zenith in the 1980s... more
Designing A Speed To Competence Process For New Sales People
Recruiting effective new salespeople is a difficult, expensive time consuming process... more
Why Is A Great Innovating Company, In Reality, More Of An Also Ran?
If you had a 60 year history of producing electronics, had produced many segment defining products, some backed with proprietary technology you licensed to competitors... more
Transportation Service Levels
It seems appropriate this week to look at how travel organisations handle service and communication issues... more
Transitioning From Sales Manager To Sales Director - Why Many Find It So Hard
In coaching sales managers a reoccurring development need that comes from their boss is ‘they need to be more strategic’... more
If You Like Simplicity – A One Page Sales Strategy
Strategy can often become over complicated and the sales version contain too many complex second and third layer requirements... more
What Is Really Going On When Designing Sales Incentive Schemes?
You would think wanting to create something that was really going to motivate sales people to perform to higher levels than they would ordinarily do would be positive for everyone... more
What Are The Conditions Required For Effective Sales Coaching To Happen?
One of the most misunderstood and misapplied areas of sales practice is around sales coaching... more
The Effective Presentation Of Sales Data – A Grave Yard Of Well Intentioned Failure
The ubiquity of spreadsheets has created a real problem with sales information... more
Notice Board Translations
Spending lots of time in organisations offices you see many things pinned on notice boards, cubicle walls and dividing screens... more
The Non Development Of Sales Professionalism Is Still With Us
Why has selling changed so little over the last 20 years?... more
What Is So Special About Selling?
Very few people go into selling as a vocation, something they wanted to do from an early age... more
How To Develop Sales Best Practice
Best Practice used as a development tool is one of the most powerful ways to improve performance... more
The Difference Between Those In Sales Management Positions That Can Add Value And Those That Can’t
This year has shown that in tough times some approaches are more effective than others... more
Tales From The Riverbank – Sales Version
What we have learned from our travels in the UK this year... more
Christmas-time Reading
Some older books, some new ones... more
The Data Checklist For Creating A High Performing Sales Organisation
When in the diagnostic phase of improving sales performance for clients we need to gather certain data sets together... more
The Difference Between Organisational Competences and Distinctiveness Competences
If you are serious about increasing your organisation’s competitive advantage you will need to understand if you have clarity around the strength of your distinctive competences... more
Preparing For The Upturn – What Kind Of Salespeople Do You Have?
The upturn in 2010 will be shallow and slow, very much two steps forward, one step back... more
Book Review: Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin – an important book, particularly for salespeople
This is a book that has been around for a while and has picked up some very good reviews. We agree, this is an excellent, thought provoking read, and deserves a higher profile... more
Potential Is For Life – Not Just For Career Launches
When a person starts out on their career they have more unused potential than performance track record. As they become more competent their performance should meet their potential, but it will never exceed it for any sustainable period... more
Some Common Errors Of Thought Process When Completing Account Plan Reviews
When account managers are running account reviews it’s important to make sure certain patterns of behaviour are not being (unconsciously) followed... more
Six Businesses Areas You Wish You Were Involved With
We are familiar with the idea of sunrise and sunset industries, but what about sunburst sectors ones that catch the moment or happen to be in the right place at the right time?... more
What Do you Think Will Happen?
Six real time business plays that in a few years time with hindsight will look like obvious successes or failures... more
How To Improve Your Future Thinking
Below are some random thoughts and ideas to help with developing your point of view about your business(es) future... more
What Is Your Approach to Sales Planning?
Is your approach tactical or strategic? Fire fighting or focused on the future?... more
Six Current Questions We All would Like Answers To When Planning Our Strategy
Being successful in business is not simply about coping and reacting to market changes but being able to predict and anticipate what might happen... more
The Challenge In Finding Good Salespeople
The hardy perennial keeps being coming round, especially given today’s demanding trading conditions... more
Is The Economy Moving Out Of Recession – And How Should You Prepare For It?
The leading indicators are getting better, the lagging indicators are still getting worse, but (some) at a slower rate. The key question today (15/07/2009) is around sustainability... more
Career Thinking In Recessionary Times – Trying To Read The Curve
Many people would say having any source of income at this time is as much as you should expect, but if you are career rather than just job minded, this is no time to suspend your critical faculties... more
Distinctive Competencies – THE Route To Winning And Keeping Customers
Businesses that do well in a recession have more goods or services that people want to buy compared to the average supplier. Why is this?... more
The 10 Causal Reasons Why So Much Customer Service Is Poorly Delivered
Looking after your customers would seem to be the most obvious thing to be focusing on in these difficult business times, so why are service levels still so variable... more
Developing The Best Kind of Customer Service People
First things first; Smile training doesn’t work... more
Integrating People with Technology To Drive Transformational Service Delivery
Effective service delivery can be transformed by the effective and clever integration of appropriate technology... more
The Real Deal Around Recruiting Salespeople
With the number of salespeople in the job market it seems timely to give a heads up on the stuff only really good recruitment agencies will talk about... more
Developing A High Performance Mind-Set*
In our sales development and coaching work we have been collating material from profiling a cohort of high performance sales people across several B2B organisations... more
Innovation/Creativity - It’s Easy To Talk About, Much Harder To Actually Do
Every business talks about being ‘innovative’ or being more ‘creative’ as part of its vision or values. Management will talk about blue sky thinking or its more robust cousin blue ocean strategy without doing much else... more
What Businesses Are Focusing On To Beat The Recession
We have been collecting lists of what businesses should be doing in a recession... more
Be Careful – Your Sales Mind-Set Is On Show
Is the current situation extraordinary, an aberration that will quickly revert to pre-summer 2008? Or is this current reality a more permanent change, a business landscape that is going to be around for some time?... more
The Best Kind Of Pressure To Perform Is Self Generated
What do all high performing sales people have in common? They work in the way they do, not because they have to, but because they want to... more
Social Networks - A Fad Or Something More?
Facebook is a social phenomenon, with over 175 million current users and for a certain demographic an indispensible part of their communication activities. more
Some News From The Sales Frontline
How field based salespeople need to stay sharp. more
Two Service Stories That Say A Lot About Where The Future Of Competitive Advantage Resides
Unless you get your service right you will never grow your organisation into a sustainable business. In this article we outline two real life examples to demonstrate what we mean. more
Some Useful Ways To Improve Your Internet Home Working Productivity
Many people use the internet to work from home. Here we list some quick and easy ways to improve your internet productivity. more
Salesforce Incentive Schemes - Good And Bad Practice
The key objective with any sales incentive scheme is to stimulate the right kind of additional performance. more
Why Does Management Get Setting Annual Sales Targets So Wrong
One of the major success drivers of sales performance can be measured by the amount of ownership salespeople have for their targets. more
The Two Questions Everybody Wants Answers To
- What is going to happen?
- What should I change in my business in the light of what is going to happen? more
How To Create And implement An Effective Sales Strategy
Every sales team, every salesperson, will have a sales target. Fewer will have a sales strategy. A sales target is a number or set of numbers, usually larger than the one set before and comes with a ringing exhortation from senior management to help it achieve take off. more
How To Create And Implement An Increase In Sales Performance
Never has the need to focus on the sales fundamentals been so critical. However, the challenge for many organisations is their sales teams have lost the habit of being pro-active and resilient.
More
The Inside Christmas Stories From Lapland HQ
Elves job security is still a huge talking point. The cancelling of Christmas rumour is seen by most as a wild exaggeration although cut backs cannot be ruled out...more
Eleven Things Effective Leaders Do...
They do nothing particularly difficult or sophisticated, but they are effective in creating value in their role through focusing on certain behaviours and activities that make all the difference. Effective Leaders...more
The Performance Coach & Personal Coach - The Differences
This month we take a slide from our library that helps distinguish two forms of coaching. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but it is critical to understand what is required and how the objectives are best achieved... more
Testing For Customer Relationship Equity
If you are in business for the long term there is nothing more important than the quality of relationships with customers...more
What Real Solution Selling Is
The concept of solution selling has become devalued to the point where everybody is ‘selling solutions’. See Private Eye (www.private-eye.co.uk) for some of the most extreme and ridiculous examples...more
Seven Sales Development Tools
There is a lot of ‘get good quick’ type sales development advice about. We thought we’d share with you 7 we have come across being peddled recently...more
Building Peer Group Pressure
Peer Group Pressure is the glue that binds high performing team together, creating a self sustaining level achievement within a supportive framework...more
Lean
Lean as a management tool is based on a simple to say more difficult to do set of four principles...more
When Business Slows Down
Remember The Fundamentals
1. Cash is king, not profit. Obsess about tracking the amount of available cash
2. Chase debtors, invoice correctly. Pay your own bills on time, not early
3. If possible sell underperforming assets, write off old stock, turn it into cash...more
Leading Through Values - The Way To Avoid Irresponsible Business Practice
With the banking crisis encouraging thoughts of financial meltdown it’s perhaps instructive to find a bank that has taken a different approach... more
Sales Leadership In An Economic Downturn
If sales leadership is about creating the right motivating atmosphere, one that stimulates salespeople to give their best as frequently as possible... more
Some Service Blind Spots
Everybody talks about how critical service is in differentiating you from the competition... more
Using Stakeholder Maps
Understanding what drives an organisation’s decision making should be a key part of the Account Manager’s role... more
What Kind Of Customer Are You Targeting?
Not all customers behave the same way because they are motivated by different things... more
A Sporting Story - Tiger Woods Might Not Only Be A Great Golfer But Also A Good Guy
Winning is only everything when you care about nothing else... more
Shift Happens: A Compelling Presentation On Thinking About The Future
In our work we sometimes come across something that really makes us think... more
The 8 Most Common Personal Attributes Of The High Performing Business To Business Salesperson
Some of the attributes are obviously identifiable, some more interesting... more
An Organisational Users Guide To The Effective Use Of E-mail
E-mail overuse and misuse is killing many organisations productivity and morale. We believe firm action is needed... more
12 Ways For Sales People To Improve Their Use Of Google As A Research Tool
Everybody knows how to use Google, fewer people know how to get more from Google’s powerful search facilities. Here we list some of the most useful... more
The 5 Top Frustrations CEOs Have With Their Sales Function
In our work it’s noticeable how often the same complaints about ‘sales’ come up in talking to CEOs. Given the tightening of many market-places we thought it was worth collecting them together in one place... more
Why Today’s Business Card Is A Sales Opportunity On Steroids
The business card used to be more about status, less about communication; simply a name, job title, address and company phone number... more
With A Recession Coming (Or Not) 10 Things Management Can Do To Keep The Sales Force Focused, Positive & Performing
1.
It's critical management stay positive themselves, but at the same time realistic... more
Peer Group Pressure Is Connected To A Team's Ability To Give Each Other Feedback
One of the most difficult things for a manager to do is give difficult feedback... more
Systems Need Effective Learning To Improve Outcomes
Apart from being owned by the same parent company, what do a UK Lexus and a Botswanan Toyota have in common?... more
How Good Is Your Front Of House?
One of the most interesting parts of a consultant’s job is visiting different organisations and seeing how strongly the way they organise their reception and switchboard reveals how customer centric the wider business actually is... more
How Value Chains Mature – The Dangers of Creeping Commoditisation
Many organisations are dealing with the issue where parts (all?) of their market-place are commoditising... more
Are Your Salespeople IT Literate?
We are all users of technology, however many salespeople have huge gaps in their IT literacy, having developed ‘coping strategies’ to get by... more
The Current Market Conditions – Opportunity Or Problem?
Does the current economic turbulence create problems or opportunities? Both depend on your circumstances and your point of view. How can you affect both to your advantage?... more
Are You In The Zone?
We are all familiar with being in our Comfort Zone, but what about the other performance/behaviour zones that can help you focus on being more effective and understand why you feel like you do when performing at certain levels... more
A Look Into The Current Workplace – How First Impressions Still Count For Older Workers
Last month we looked at how younger people can get it right or wrong in the workplace through their appearance and (non) verbal dexterity... more
Why Everyone Can’t Be Talented And How Some Organisations Deal With The Opportunity
Given a standard distribution curve, the amount of really talented managers in business is going to be relatively small. The bulge of managers (as opposed to a manager’s bulge) will be around the middle, classified as average... more
What Every Business To Business (B2B) Organisation Is Trying To Achieve
When all the strategies have been written, all the workshops attended, and all the board meetings or management meetings sat through, what all B2B businesses are trying to achieve is the same thing... more
A Look Into The Current Workplace - Why Some Young People Still Don’t Get How To Increase/Reduce Their Credibility Through Appearance And Speech
The younger you are the more appearance will contribute to your credibility (or not). The older you get the more licence you obtain in being individual or weird, depending on taste... more
What Will You Do With Your Extra Day?
On Friday you have an extra day, the leap year has arrived to give you more time. How could you productively use these 24 hours?... more
10 New Sales Resolutions That Will Improve your Business Performance (For Sales Directors)
1.
Stop/reduce Managing and start/increase Leading... more
10 New Year Resolutions That Will Improve Your Business Performance (For Sales Managers)
1.
Stop believing that a mediocre person is better than a vacancy. It institutionalises average as being acceptable. Improve the person’s performance or change the person... more
10 New Sales Resolutions That Will Improve Your Business Performance (For Salespeople)
1. Speak to a difficult customer you have been putting off talking to. Our analysis shows salespeople are more likely to talk to customers they like before ones they don’t, regardless of the business opportunity... more
Some Inspirational Reading/Viewing for Christmas
For one of the most effective lessons in tactical leadership you’ll ever experience, use your Christmas holiday to either read the book or watch the DVD box set of Band of Brothers... more
The SalesPathways 2007 Service Awards
During our 2007 travels we have experienced many different levels of service. We thought it was timely to mention the stand out ones we have been lucky enough to experience during the year... more
Performance Management At Christmas
How come Christmas always works? The answer is Father Christmas’s Performance Management System is built on fundamental best practice principles... more
Using Assessment / Development Centres (ADCs) To Improve Performance
It’s no coincidence that sales excellence and the use of ADCs are highly correlated... more
Speed To Competence – No Faster Way To Impact Results
Think of a new sales appointment. How quickly will they be able to reach the minimum level of productivity and results you require to constitute their appointment a success?... more
Training Sales Managers To Coach Without Context Will Not Deliver Improved Results
“We are all coaches now” said an International Sales Director at a recent conference. Later at the same event a new Performance Management system was introduced that required managers to sit down with their people twice a year and complete an on-line appraisal... more
What Should Keep The CEO Awake At Night?
It’s not what the competition are doing, or whether the business is compliant or not, or the weather, it's something that has crept up on business in the last 10 years without many people noticing... more
Hands Up Who Gets Marketing?
Ask that question in an FMCG business and there would be a strong showing. Ask it in many B2B businesses and the response would be far patchier... more
Eleven Business/People Orthodoxies – Where Do You Stand?
1. Command & Control Management Style. Management gurus and business schools have for 20 years been saying the modern organisation needs to be run on different lines, so why, apart from some notable exceptions (which tend to be start-ups), is it so slow in changing? ... more
The Steps To Building Effective Sales Reward Schemes
Sales Incentive schemes are one of the most important sales tools to get right and it’s one of the most likely to be got wrong. Here we provide a do and don’t list to help to design/check your own scheme... more
The Differences Between Traditional and Enterprise Wide Selling
This month we thought a table you can print out and take to the beach could act as a provocative thought starter... more
Our Version Of The Newspaper Silly Season
We thought you might enjoy some stories we’ve heard over the last 12 months as to why business targets haven’t been met, smile inducing unless you are paying the wages... more
The Trend Continues - (Some) Field Salespeople Are An Endangered Species
It should come as no surprise to read last weeks announcement that the pharma giant Merck is planning to lay-off a large part of its salesforce. Saying that they can create more sales momentum from other channels such as product marketing, brands and sales promotion is becoming a common refrain... more
What Are The Circumstances Where B2B Field Salespeople Can Flourish?
Given the challenges some sales organisations face (see ‘The Trend Continues - (Some) Field Salespeople Are an Endangered Species’), how can you avoid these problems?... more
Identifying Salespeople Who Can Make A Difference
Here we give you a quick checklist to help identify the salespeople who can create new value for you... more
Connecting With The C-Suite
Are you capable of having a C-Suite conversation? Anybody with the word Chief in their job title; be it with Executive, Financial, Technology, or Information these are the people that lead businesses... more
How To Lever Technology Into Delivering Transformational Customer Experiences
Every company uses technology, why do so few create transformational experiences? To engage in this debate we use a concept call High Tech/High Touch... more
Eleven Rules About Field Based Sales People And Making New Business Appointments
1. The more senior the person you are trying to get a new sales appointment with, the harder it will be for anybody to make that appointment other than a sales person working directly on the phone... more
10 Ways To Freshen Up Tactical Sales Performance
1. Run a short–term incentive around a particular product/service... more
The Sales Interview Technique That Makes a Real Difference
The worst thing you can do is to interview salespeople based on them talking through their CV... more
You Get The Sales Organisation You Deserve – A Guide To The Most Common Failings
Salespeople will behave in ways that align with the way they are recognised and rewarded... more
The Customer Has Postponed The Final Purchasing Decision
What do the following reasons for quarterly targets being missed have in common?... more
The Adding Value Salesperson versus Commodity Selling
Salespeople’s ability to add value to the sales process is in direct proportion to the customer’s perception of how commoditised the product or service is they are buying... more
Rules to Skills to Values – The Journey To Sales Team Empowerment
Rules based sales teams will achieve only so much because of the significant management overhead required in making sure they stick to the rules... more
Recruiting Sales People – What You Should Really Do
Sales organisations are always trying to recruit who they think are the best salespeople... more
7 Technology Related Trends That Are Coming To A Place Near You!
The mobile phone looks like being the first truly successful convergence device since the Teasmaid(?)... more
Its Extrinsic Motivation That Gets All The Attention And Budget,
But Its Intrinsic Motivation That Builds Real Competitive Advantage... more
Prospero Has A Blog
People reading our newsletters often have comments about them, they either agree, disagree, or have questions about the content. Now you can join the debate on the new Prospero Barn Blog... more
Where Have All The Sales Leaders Gone?
Many sales teams aren’t led but managed. Sales Directors, National Sales Managers & Field Sales Managers all need to occupy the leadership space, but many don’t, preferring to stand only on management ground... more
The Modern Sales Professional’s Glossary of Competitive Advantage
These are some of the concepts that are helping the modern sales organisation effectively engage with their most demanding customers and prospects. SalesPathways can help you develop your own capabilities in any of these areas... more
The Challenges Of Dominant Incumbency
When being the biggest isn’t necessarily good news... more
The Minimum Requirements Of Real-Time Sales Management Information
Knowing more than your customers, before your customers, in a joined up way is now a business given. Below are the primary data sets any self respecting sales organisation should have a handle on... more
12 Sales Stories For Christmas
The sales guy who was spotted asleep at the wheel of his car outside a major customer (missing his appointment) with a copy of Covey’s 7 Habits shielding his face from the sun...more
Everybody Can Think, Why Don’t We Do More Of It?
There is thinking concerned with conception (‘day dreaming’) and thinking concerned with action (problem solving)... more
Sales Teams Who Rely On The Manager Getting It Right, All The Time
The tyranny that many sales directors face is one they struggle to articulate until you point it out, and then they have a lightbulb moment and say “absolutely!”. They go further and say if I could solve this problem I would transform the potential of this team... more
The Future Belongs To Those Who See It Coming
One of the things the makes business a fascinating thing to study, it the real-time observable fight for sustainable survival going on at in front of our eyes. What the outcomes will be will only be obvious with hindsight... more
The Benefits Of An Effective Performance Management System
Perfomance Management executed professionally can tranform and organisations ability to drive sales growth… more
Competencies – The Building Blocks of Sales DNA
If the talent of your sales organisation follows the usual distribution curve you will have a few star performers, a few poor performers and the majority there or there about occupying the middle ground. What if you could shift the curve towards the top performers? Think what a difference it would make if a sizable majority; perhaps even half of your sales people were achieving their stretch targets?... more
Selling – The Last Bastion of Amateur Practice?
Over the last 20 years business organisations have transformed themselves. This has been done through the application of a much more disciplined, systemic approach to each functional area. These functions have become professional... more
Football Sales Management
It’s about scoring more goals that the other team – the 'stating the obvious' school of sales management... more
Four Things That Distinguish High Performing, High Growth Organisations From The Rest
Through our ongoing project work we thought it timely to share what we are finding to be four areas of focus that seem to make a material difference to organisational sales performance... more
Ten Strategy Thought Starters
Strategy definition: Creating distinctive, sustainable competitive advantage. Not difficult to articulate but for many organisations difficult to do well... more
Do You Have A Business Growth Engine?
Business Law Number One, every commercial business has to grow its top line revenues over time unless it has found the paradise of declining costs year on year. This is the only way to maintain a profit margin. Therefore, it should follow that every business has a very clear idea how to grow its top line, surprisingly many don’t... more
How Do You Define Value?
The concept of value is an endemic factor of business life. Every organisation is selling ‘value’; every purchaser (whether another business or consumer) is looking to buy ‘value’. So what exactly is value?... more
Business Change Phases - A Three Card Trick
When a business is going through business change it needs a high degree of awareness of the context it finds itself in. Change does not happen in a vacuum, things have led up to the change and things will follow. The trick relates to being aware of your current change phase you are so you can apply the appropriate strategies... more
What’s Happening To Key Account Sales People?
One of the most dynamic areas of the sales process is Key Account Management (we’re using the term generically; there are differing variations like Global Account Management, Enterprise Wide Selling etc, and synonyms like Major Account Management etc). However, whatever the term or nuance, one change driver connects all these different selling approaches; that focusing on a fewer number of customers in ways that delivers greater lifetime value is a very effective business strategy... more
Poor Sales Performance – Don’t Make a Category Mistake
When a salesperson (or anybody for that matter), isn’t performing it’s useful to think about causes not symptoms. There are three root causes as to why somebody isn’t performing... more
Understanding The Motivations of Procurement Departments
Any high value sales team will know all about procurement departments. They intercede themselves between the line management decision makers and the selling organisation... more
How Would You Rate Your Organisation’s Ability To Compete?
All organisations are striving to increase their competitive advantage. Why is it that some seem to have more advantage than others?... more
Business Predictions made in June 2000 for June 2006 by Frankie (mad) Hatter
Sony will be toast in the mobile music market by 2005. The Walkman brand will count for not very much, Mini-disc nowhere and owning their own record label (guaranteeing content) irrelevant...more
A Quick Checklist To Decide Whether Your Business Is At The Top Of Its Business Life Cycle Curve (not all need apply)
The amount off cash the business is throwing off reaches unfeasibly high levels...more
The Four Most Difficult Sales Types to Manage
Managing salespeople is never easy. The top performers who also do things in the approved fashion and the chronic under performers are relatively straightforward to sort out. It’s the awkward squad who are trickier. Below we offer a snapshot of four of the most common types... more
Let’s Hear It For The Old Fashioned Business Getter!
We know that these days cold calling by phone or face-to-face is not going to be very productive, or look very professional. However, winning new business will always be required... more
How Effectively Do Your Salespeople Deliver Value?
The word value is used extensively in the discourse of B2B selling. Often conjoined with the words such as; good, added, proposition, add etc. It’s used so often its real meaning can become lost... more
If You Do One Thing With Your Strategy - Differentiate
There is a critical strategic component that is often completely misunderstood, even ignored all together. The requirement to differentiate through the conscious act of making trade-offs. A winning strategy is by definition different from competitors and what makes it different should be clearly understood by your organisation... more
Possible Differentiation Strategies
How to differentiate is about understanding the main drivers of competitive advantage... more
A Company That is Distinctive
first direct Bank (part of HSBC)
Below are a selection of points that go to show why they are one of the most successful and distinctive banks in the UK... more
An Inside Track To Creating Enormous Wealth (Well, An Idea Or Two!)
Warren Buffett is the one of the world’s wealthiest men, worth circa $40 billion. Reading books about how to replicate his wealth we feel is, at best, a very hopeful premise. However, a couple of his techniques are well worth considering in helping with the strategic development of your business... more
Are You Using The Term Performance Management Correctly?
It’s obvious that sales people need to perform at the required level. It’s surprising how many sales organisations don’t effectively performance manage their sales teams. To do so, the first requirement is to understand what Performance Management is and isn’t... more
Have You Started A Blog Yet? Do You Read A Blog?
These might seem nerdy questions but blogging (blog is a conflation of web log) could be a very big deal indeed. It’s certainly keeping some business awake at night – newspapers fearing their businesses being undermined, major corporations seeing customer blogs giving the ‘real deal’ on their products, or employees telling it like it really is... more
Who Are You? A Quick Self Awareness Check
Somebody who knows what the future capability requirement is and does what is necessary in their role because they want to... more
All Salespeople Are Just Money Motivated? Some Thought Starters
Money is firstly to do with safety and security needs... more
We Are All Selling Solutions Now – But What Are You Really Selling?
Have you noticed how every B2B organisation is now selling solutions? Not just products or services, packages or commodities but lots of solutions... more
Three Business Changing Forces in 2006
"The future has already happened; it just isn't very well distributed" - William Ford Gibson... more
Is Your Organisation Fit or Sexy?
It can be neither but it can't be both... more
The Business Imperative For Being A Demanding, Performance Orientated Organisation (One more time!)
It stimulates a success orientated culture that constantly reinforces itself... more
There are major change forces affecting the way business will be conducted over the coming years. Understanding these forces and working out appropriate responses can give you real market leadership... more
Do your Sales Executives measure up?... more
We Are All Selling Services And Solutions Now
As many market-places commoditise selling organisations attempt to move up their value chain to escape the deathly grip of diminishing competitive advantage... more
Developing Key Accounts
A business that is serious about maximising the business from its existing customer base will need to have a key account specialism. Below we have outlined a list of the criteria that will deliver an effective Key Account Capability... more
Is Communication A Problem To The Answer
Increasingly more and more business people are faced with the challenge of being able to communicate effectively and professionally with their customer base, their colleagues, their managers and their suppliers. The ability to prepare and... more
Ten Indicators Of High Performance Sales Management
Discover the ten key indicators of high performance sales management, and see how your team measure up... more
How Do You Future Proof Your Sales Organisation?
The sales function is dead, long live the sales function. It’s a much more interesting debate to focus not on whether selling is finished (it isn’t), but on how it needs to change. This article focuses on the drivers that will future proof your sales function, keeping it... more
How Are You Coping With Change In Your Sales Value Chain?
We haven’t met a sales organisation that doesn’t use words like solutions, valued added, consultative in its meetings, but when we see salespeople operating out in the field they are working with terms like, deals, discounts, special terms and... more
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