I recently had a meeting with the CEO of a small $3M company. He wanted to increase sales. When I asked him what was keeping him from increasing his sales he mentioned that he was limited by his inventory, or rather matching the right inventory to the right customer. I was able to give him a simple solution, and it didn’t cost him a thing.
Read MoreChallenging your team requires that you do things smarter and not just harder. There are some goals where working smarter is difficult.
One common case of the “false challenge” can occur in sales forecasting. It stems from the belief that sales people are lazy and will sandbag their numbers. So management might add 20% to their numbers regardless of history or latitude.
Doing great things doesn’t come naturally. It requires an internal drive and often it also requires some external demand.
Several years ago I had the privilege of watching a senior executive challenge a small team intent on developing a new business.
Because this is election season, and because I am an advocate of 1:1 marketing, I masochistically thought I would sign up for the campaigns of both parties to see how they are using email marketing to reach their constituents. I now receive over forty emails a day asking for money. How stupid of me.
Read MoreA long time a go, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran a team that developed a photo-retouching and pagination system that broke the $100K barrier. We were competing with a $1M system. Today you can perform similar tasks for less than $1000. You can also…
Read MoreLarge companies reward people for maintaining the status quo and avoiding risk. But I think it’s a personal issue. Are we afraid to make mistakes?
Read MoreIn Cost, Quality, and Value – The Buyer’s Side, I defined value as quality divided by cost. And quality was loosely defined as the degree to which customer or prospects needs are met. But that’s not the end of the story. The problem with this definition is… what happens when the prospect doesn’t know what they need?
Read MoreThere is a 2007 study by James Oldroyd, PhD Professor Sloan School of Management at MIT and David Elkington of InsideSales.com that I think is worth looking at.
Read MoreI once had a telemarketer keep me on the phone for over a minute. My usual average was less than 15 seconds, depending on how long it took them to take a breath. I’m polite because I like to hear their approaches. He asked me a key question; “Was I earning 20+% on my investments?” I said, no.
Read MoreMars curiosity will be landing one way or the other August 5th. Will you have seven minutes of terror, or will you know your prospects are watching your whiteboard before the video is over?
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