It seems so obvious.
If that team member has a Blackberry and a company car; if they call on customers and help resolve their problems; then they must be a salesperson, right?
Well, maybe not!
Sure, that’s the way things have traditionally been done: the person in the field is automatically the salesperson. But, in many cases, today, […]

Your Director of Sales should be charged with the responsibility for maximizing sales, right?
Well, maybe not!
If he or she is, it might be worth reflecting on what this says about how your critical business functions are resourced.
Let’s assume (for simplicity) that your business consists of just two basic functions:

Sales
Production

Ask yourself, which of these functions should […]

Managers and team members alike can often be observed drawing the convenient conclusion that some recent mishap was simply a communication problem.
This conclusion is convenient because, in practice, it’s an excuse to do nothing! After all, aren’t humans (being humans) prone to mis-communication?
Now, if you accept that an inability to communicate is a fundamental characteristic […]

Here’s a favorite post of mine from our old Yahoo group …
Philosophies collide!
I was presenting a workshop in Darwin (Australia) recently when the manager of a (government-funded) organization objected that our methods focus only on the financial bottom line — and that they are not conducive with the concept of triple-bottom-line management.
Now, I must have […]

In a previous post, I poked fun at the practice of sales forecasting in major-account sales environments — referring to it as hocus-pocus with a dollar sign.
The essence of my argument was that, in environments where transactions are small in frequency, but large in magnitude ($’s), the traditional approach to forecasting destroys information — rather […]