From time to time, I come across managers who battle valiantly and unflinchingly to accomplish what appears to be downright impossible. To their credit, these noble individuals manage to notch up occasional successes! I even see entire businesses that owe their existence to the belief that, with enough passion, determination and brute force, miracles can [...]

Following is the sad story of the entrepreneurial Harry Edgecliffe and his ruthless competitor Spot Pet Foods. Although neither Harry nor Spot exists, their tale provides a number of invaluable lessons for all marketers. Harry Edgecliffe is not a happy man! In recent months, the business he toiled for so many years to build has [...]

I just had a call from a client who owns a make-to-order manufacturing firm (building materials) in New Zealand. Chris was agitated because he had just realised that, last week, across his sales team, 20 appointment slots had gone unfilled, due either to cancellations or a failure to schedule appointments. He had calculated that these [...]

I spent a couple of hours with a Sydney-based insolvency practitioner last week. He visited to request assistance with his marketing. (Yes it’s okay, Ballistix is still solvent!) Because this was my first meeting with a potential client I waited a full 10 minutes before challenging the viability of his business model. Fortunately, my guest’s [...]

Whose responsibility, I wonder, is client retention? Most organisations believe it’s the salesperson’s. Consequently, many salespeople spend a disproportionate amount of their time on account management. ‘Account management’ is a polite way of referring to a process that involves driving from client to client, drinking coffee and talking about the football. In the US, they [...]

It’s often claimed that there are fundamental differences between major- and minor-account selling. Obviously, we’re not interested in the ‘selling’ here, so much as in the ‘sales process’. Here are some thoughts on this issue. If a minor opportunity is one that you can win in a single appointment, then a major opportunity is just [...]

At one of our public roundtables this morning (in Sydney), we discussed the relationship between the potential client’s buying process and the organisation’s opportunity-management process. It’s an interesting insight, I think. The potential client’s buying process could be characterised as follows: The potential client suffers pain of some kind — but resolves (consciously or unconsciously) [...]

When I insist that Sales Coordinators — and never Salespeople — should make follow-up calls, there’s always a howl of protest from Salespeople. "What about the relationship?" is the instinctive response, followed by, "but Sales Coordinators don’t have technical skills — or sales skills". Of course we can immediately discount the instinctive response (Executives have PA’s [...]

I guess I don’t really mind that people generally regard me as being opposed to salesperson autonomy (and, of course, performance pay). Antagonism is certainly more newsworthy than conformity! However, my position is not quite this simple, and a deeper understanding of the basic principle at stake here is more useful than the sound bite. [...]

I was impressed to see Gordon Ramsay explain TOC basics to a failing restaurateur in his new reality show “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” the other night. Ramsay is the gruff, Scottish, Michelin-star-winning, celebrity chef. His show tracks his attempts to knock poor-performing restaurants into shape with his unique mix of screamed expletives, gentle reasoning and some [...]