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Archive for August 6th, 2007

New Article – The Structure Of A Selling System

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.

Brutal Bosses Get Promoted?

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.

What Is A Fuzzy Phrase?

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.

A Blogger’s Union

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.