The Holy Grail of technical sales: how to disentangle salespeople from production

[@consultski]

>> In fact, for many firms, fixing the interface between sales and production represents perhaps the most exciting short-term opportunity to develop a competitive advantage. <<

Agreed. The results from focusing personnel on those tasks that fall within one's domain is nothing short of amazing. What most people overlook when they discount SPE at first glance, is that every function still gets performed. And that when the 20% are focused like lasers on the sales PROCESS, breakthroughs are a given.

-ski

[Justin Roff-MarshKeymaster]

Whenever we work in a technical-sales environment, this – bar none – is the most valuable idea we bring to the table. Here’s the most obvious symptom
[See the full post at: The Holy Grail of technical sales: how to disentangle salespeople from production]

[Roger Edwards]

our policy is to never propose a transition plan that causes operating expenses to increase in the short term

Can you elaborate further?

[Justin Roff-MarshKeymaster]

In our experience, a plan that causes expenses to rise is unlikely to survive contact with reality (we have lots of experience with this)!

These kind of fundamental changes take time and patience and you don’t get that if someone in finance is toting up the incremental cost of the change initiative.

The other reason is that, if you have a plan that causes costs to rise then it’s simply a bad plan. When you consider that SPE typically approaches the productivity of a salesperson by 10x, it should be clear that you can add all the sales support infrastructure you need without increasing total payroll cost.

Justin

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