Measures and General Management

The evil of time-and-material billing

Okay, perhaps evil is a bit of an exaggeration, but whenever I encounter an environment where time is tracked and billed, I see tremendous inefficiencies and value-destruction. Let’s consider why. Imagine you have something to sell – a widget, say. Tell me, for how much should you sell it? The answer to that question is […]

Applying Sales Process Engineering, Managing Opportunities

Achieving Success in Industrial Sales: Liberating Salespeople from Production Challenges

The Holy Grail of technical sales: how to disentangle salespeople from production 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 of the problem: When salespeople make a technical sale, they inevitably become entangled with production. Their […]

Applying Sales Process Engineering

Why you should simplify your engagement model

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 […]