Part 2 in our 3 part Proactive Sales Management series has been released.  It is titled The Structure of a Selling System and continues the homebuilding analogy by comparing a selling system to the framing of a house.

Just to give you a taste:

It took me awhile to understand what was going on and why some of the things I was required to do were important. The key to the training was to understand and use a proven sales process. Tom assured me of success if I stayed within this structured approach. He also assured me I would fail if I didn€™t use the process and techniques that had been refined by those who preceded me in this role. Tom told me repeatedly, €œThis structure and approach works.€

As an example, here are some of the questions from Tom€™s structured system:

• What lead them to consider our product or service?

• Who are the people making the decision?  Are their any hidden decision makers?  What does the decision-making process look like?

• How will the purchase be financed?  Sale, lease? Any special terms & conditions?

• When will delivery be required?

• What other are products are being examined?  What attracted the buyer to those products?

• Does the ROI make sense?  Has a cost justification been made? Is one required?

A funny thing happens to reps when they get asked these questions consistently €“ they go out and qualify the information from their prospects (as I learned to do). As Tom would say, €œEverything in this structure will have to happen at some point in the sales cycle. You might as well do it now, rather than later, or when it€™s too late. Spend your time on deals that will happen, don€™t waste your time on deals that won€™t, or on deals we don€™t want.€

As they say, read the whole thing.

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This report just cuts against common sense in many ways. From Yahoo News’ Bad bosses get promoted, not punished?

In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

Whenever I see these types of surveys, I wonder about the wording. “Domineering ways” is definitely a fuzzy phrase. I would guess that the respondents may simply have had an issue with a High D style.

I’ve worked for quite a few bad bosses and I know the stress involved with them. Some of these items seems a bit much:

Despite their success in the office, spiteful supervisors can cause serious malaise for their subordinates, the study suggested, citing nightmares, insomnia, depression and exhaustion as symptoms of serving a brutal boss.

Color me skeptical on these results.

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The Rock Star posted on fuzzy phrases just about a year ago. I believe I have uncovered a pristine example from an email I received this morning:

The deadline is mid September.

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Talk about another bad business decision – from the Pioneer Planet’s Bloggers May Form Union:

A loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers is trying to form a labor union in hopes of helping them secure health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

But wait, it gets better:

“Blogging is very intense – physically, mentally,” she said. “You’re constantly scanning for news. You’re constantly trying to … mobilize your readers.

I particularly enjoyed the first part of that quote – blogging is very intense physically.  Physically?  Insert your own Jay Leno joke about how fat we are becoming as a nation.

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