All managers want to see their company grow. Their company’s growth comes from one of three sources: More labor – you can produce more if you hire more people or if you ask your existing staff to work longer hours. More capital – you can seek capital and use it to invest in new equipment, […]
Sales Management Association Challenges Sales Training Tradition
A recent article on salesforce.com by Jason Jordan challenges our assumptions about sales training. Normally when we hear sales training, we assume that means training for salespeople. Jordan recommends that we focus sales training investments on sales managers instead of salespeople. This surprising conclusion came from the results of a survey by the Sales Management […]
Why It’s So Hard to Fill Sales Jobs
The Wall Street Journal reports that many companies find it difficult to fill positions in sales. Positions in scientific and technical fields pay well, but young people are uninterested. Technical sales and sales-management positions play a critical role for U.S. businesses, but they are among the hardest to fill, according to a 2014 report from […]
Rebuild Your Sales Function from the Inside Out
If field sales is on the wane and inside sales is replacing it, how do we organize the sales function to reflect this transition? Justin Roff-Marsh recommends an inside-out approach. “Start with an inside sales function and then add field resources as they are required—and only to the extent they are required.” He says to […]
Inside Sales: Lower Cost, More Effective, Customer Preferred
Field sales is no longer necessary in the way it once was because communication has improved. At one time customers relied on salespeople for information about not only the vendor but also industry trends. Conversely, vendors relied on their salespeople to learn about changes in their market and customer needs. Customers today no longer need […]
Redesigning the Work of Sales
In my last article I described four principles that Justin Roff-Marsh recommends we adopt to dramatically improve Sales productivity. Scheduling should be centralized. Workflows should be standardized. Resources should be specialized. Management should be formalized. Let’s look at how Roff-Marsh applies these principles to the sales function. Although this article only summarizes the application of […]
Four Principles that Precede the Division of Labor in Sales
If the sales function has not kept up with the productivity gains that we’ve seen on the production side of the house, what has been holding us back from making the changes that would improve productivity? Well, for a long time the traditional sales model worked, so changes were unnecessary. But those times of the […]
What Caused the Traditional Sales Model to Collapse?
The traditional model of sales no longer works. Salespeople find that they spend: Too much time doing customer service and account administration work. Not enough time in meaningful sales interactions that lead to additional business with current and new customers. Too much time working with production and finance on non-standard orders. How did we get […]
A New Assumption for Sales
In his recent book, The Machine, A Radical Approach to the Design of the Sales Function, Justin Roff-Marsh recommends a new assumption for Sales. The old assumption is broken, he says, and no longer fits in our world. What is the old assumption? In the old model a salesperson owns the relationship with the customer […]