My Sales Philosophy Soapbox
This page can lead you to a discussion of some of my sales philosophies. The site is under construction, feedback is welcomed. It is by no means complete and there are additions on a regular basis.
This site provides some ideas to help others be successful. If you are interested in getting in touch with me for a seminar based on information here look below for the e-mail link.
If you have gotten here, likely you have been invited to make suggestions which in the world of sales are always welcome.
Today's Sales Environment
In today's environment there are a couple of approaches to sales. One is to spend a tremendous amount of money putting in back end sales systems which attempt to track customers and hope to monitor the activity of the sales team often to the point of making certain that a sales person accurately identifies a sale before it actually takes place.
This takes a lot of management and in poorly implemented cases ends up being micromanagement which often drives away the best sales people.
This type of sales management actually takes up a lot of precious sales time with busy work.
If you have a very stable sales force and a very stable customer base with ever increasing revenue from a closely defined customer base this can be an effective if expensive sales model.
You can forecast sales and have a fundamentally strong sales process without driving your sales people crazy.
The alternative lets you build a highly independent, flexible, fast moving sales force that you measure not from the amount of pre-sales information that they create but from the number of real sales where they facilitate the orders for your product.
Learn more about one new way to do sales
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The Team Approach To Sales Good sales people are like knowledge sponges which never stop learning. Years ago it was not unusual for a company to go after a market with a large dedicated sales force. Often account teams covered large customers and sales people had the luxury of strong pre and post sales support. In today's global environment, the individual sales rep often has to be a team of one with complex product offerings and support often coming from remote telesales support teams who have little real contact with customers. This is a different sales environment and it will be even more challenging in the future. Team Sales |
More Links and Information
This is a web-based PowerPoint presentation that I am happy to deliver to interested groups.
Sales Basics For New Companies
If you are looking for some additional thoughts on high tech sales here are a couple of very good articles.
BusinessWeek "How Tech Sellers Put Buyers First"
BusinessWeek "Why High Tech Has To Stay Humble"
Great Article on the Board of Directors Fiduciary Responsibility To Market Research.
"Invest at least one dollar in market research for each dollar invested in engineering"
The Connection Between Market Research and Engineering
My weblog also has thoughts on sales and customer satisfaction interspersed among my recent posts. Sales and customer satisfaction are absolutely an unbroken circle. One does not function well without the other. A good sales force can help drive feed the whole cycle which creates new products which provide higher customer satisfaction if a company is willing to listern.