Processes and Systems
Is your sales pipeline lying to you?
Tell me if this sounds familiar. In management meetings, sales say something like, “We have a great pipeline, with over X number of qualified opportunities, totaling 5x what we need to hit our number.” It sounds like some good math, right? But when you inspect it, it turns out that there are only about 8…
Read MoreMaking Your Sales Process…Work
Ask yourself if this sounds familiar. You ask one of your employees or team members about an opportunity with a potential new customer. “Looks good,” he says. “Why’s that?” you ask. “They liked what we had to show them. I feel good about it.” You ask, “What’s the next step?” “I’m waiting to hear back.”…
Read MoreMission ImPossible: 4 Steps to Finding the Truth in Your Pipeline
Mission ImPossible: 4 Steps to Finding the Truth in Your Pipeline Let me know if this scenario sounds familiar… You’ve got a sales team (of some sort). You’re invested in marketing. You’ve got some sales leader or a group of them who are responsible for “driving revenue.” And you’ve got goals for growing your…
Read MoreWhat Do I Really Do with A CRM?
It’s time to rethink the CRM. It’s not just for evaluating prospecting and reviewing the pipeline, though it’s 2023-necessary for doing those. The CRM is really about your market, real intelligence, and finding opportunities to grow the business. And that makes it incredibly important to you – and potentially to whoever runs or buys your…
Read MoreThe Sales Engine and How We Build It. The Basics.
The Sales Engine and How We Build It. The Basics. At a certain point in consulting, you start realizing you’re doing the same thing over and over again, even if you didn’t mean to. You see that most companies need the same things, to different degrees. So in an effort to make my own life…
Read MoreBoard Game Strategy for Sales and Business.
Board Game Strategy for Sales and Business. Sales are mostly checkers, and everything else is chess. My firstborn, my 10-year-old son, whom I love, just recently finished going 10-1 against me in chess. In fairness, I’ve never played before he taught it to me in stress-free chess, or something like that. In some fairness, he…
Read MoreWhen To Use Email
When to use email? At least in sales. At least once a week, a sales coaching client will send me a note that reads, “Adam, can you look at this email from (fill in the blank)? I want to win this account, but am not sure how to respond.” Sometimes, the seller will include an…
Read MoreHow To Do Compensation
How to do compensation? At least for sales. In the last 8 weeks, four companies have asked me about compensation design for salespeople. The reasons for the conversations varied from company to company. In one case, the role the CEO had imagined for sales had changed, and he needed to invest more in post-sales service.…
Read More7 Keys to Hiring for Growth
7 Keys to Hiring for Growth The Fallacy of, “We Won’t Overpay.” “We’re not going to overpay. For anyone or anything.” A president of a company recently said this about a key hire he planned to make. The delta between the candidate’s ask and the offer they were willing to make was somewhere between 30…
Read MorePeople Management in Sales: The Basics
People Management in Sales: The Basics “Business is easy. It’s people that are difficult.” – Warren Buffett For 10 years, I would talk to owners of small businesses (up to 75mm in sales, if you’re wondering how I define a small business), and inevitably hear the following: “I just want to hire someone who doesn’t…
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