As many of you know, I’ve been splitting my time between Australia and the US for the last six months or so. I’ve been interested to see that, although I’ve cut my available capacity in Australia by almost half, our volume of Aussie sales has stayed exactly the same (in fact, in recent times it […]
Imagine you were to awaken one morning suffering from a strange disorder: one that rendered your eyesight unreliable. When you open your eyes, your bedroom appears roughly as it did the night before. Your bed is below the open window, and your dresser is still adjacent to the door. However, a second look reveals that […]
and how to fast-track the growth of your business in the process. Over lunch, a CEO recently admitted to me that his financial controller was using his organisation’s profits to build quite a substantial commercial property portfolio. When I asked if this was best use of his organisation’s free cashflow, he smiled, “How did I […]
Tell me, how’s your conversion rate? Specifically, is your organisation converting the optimal percentage of sales opportunities into sales? My bet is that you’ll find this question hard to answer … for two possible reasons: You don’t know what your optimal conversion rate is. You can’t bring yourself to be happy with a conversion rate […]
Applying the Theory of Constraints to the design, resourcing and management of the sales process [Presented at: TOCICO Conference, Miami 2004] Introduction The traditional sales process is hard to manage and all but impossible to scale. This paper introduces a radical new approach to sales process design, resourcing and management. The result of this approach […]
You know, I’d hate to be a marketing manager in a typical service-based firm. The problem is, in such a firm, there’s precious little for a marketing manager to manage! Here’s a person with no authority, no direct reports, a tiny budget, and no process to oversee. A person who’s only mandate (to ’get the […]
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what percentage of their sales they should be spending on advertising, I’d be writing this column from Aspen! Problem is, it’s simply the wrong question to ask. And I’ll show you why… Let’s assume that the objective of your advertising is to generate sales. […]
If you’ve attended any of our recent breakfasts, you’ll know that I am a big fan of e-mail perodicals – or ’eBulletins’, as I call them. Now, whenever I mention eBulletins, someone asks, ’But Justin, isn’t broadcast e-mail spam?’ My answer: ’Well it is, and it isn’t!’ You see, it all depends on your definition […]
In a process built along the lines we advocate it is critical that salespeople pursue a ‘sale’ at each business-development appointment. Now this sale may not be the achievement of the ultimate objective. In many cases it’s just permission to move to the next step in the (standardised) opportunity-management process. It may be that salespeople […]
