A handoff is effective when there is a rapid change in ownership of the work packet, with a complete absence of conflict. The handoff itself does not create value, but it can destroy value, of course! Value is created by the overarching process. The key to an effective handoff is a full kit. The “kit” […]
Your salespeople have finite capacity, and we should probably assume that they are consistently busy. This means that if we ask them to perform an activity, it will be performed in place of another activity. If we consider the pool of possible transactions upstream from your organization, this pool can be divided into two categories: […]
This claim is not wrong. But it’s not helpful either! I’ve spent a week at the nation’s leading distributor conference, listening to executive after executive proclaiming the criticality of local customer relationships, maintained by branch salespeople. Now, on the final day of the conference, McKinsey is presenting survey results, suggesting that customers value availability, price, […]
A healthy business A healthy business has two value chains: Business as usual (generates operating profit) Growth (generates growth in operating profit) It should not be controversial to suggest that both chains should be optimized for speed. However, in most businesses, these two value chains do not exist in any meaningful sense. You have one […]
A viable alternative based on Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints Imagine you were to take over the management of a Formula One team, and rather than focusing on the car’s speed, you focused on reducing fuel consumption. That would be stupid, right? Idiotic, even! But this is the orthodox approach to business management. Not surprisingly, the […]
When we work with those manufacturers that sell via resellers of various types, we often encounter an instance of the Drunkard’s Search problem within the sales department. This article describes the problem, as well as a solution we devised around 15 years ago—but abandoned because we believed it was too complex to be practical. Our […]
This article was first published on Thomasnet.com. You can read the original here. Your salespeople are NOT short of leads! If you hear a crazy idea often enough, there’s a danger that you’ll come to passively accept it — particularly if it’s on the periphery of your primary interest area. Some of these ideas (think, astrology) […]
This article was first published on Thomasnet.com. You can read the original here. If you make revenue the responsibility of your sales department, you will handicap the growth of your organization. If you want your organization to grow, operations should be responsible for revenue and your sales department should focus exclusively on new business. Before […]
You know, there are two types of people in the world. Those who tolerate complexity, in pursuit of simplicity. And those who revel in complexity, having long forgotten what it is that they’re actually pursuing. I write this a little exhausted, after spending countless hours debating technology, terminology, definitions and process with a parade of […]
