Applying Sales Process Engineering, Managing Opportunities

The Holy Grail of technical sales: how to disentangle salespeople from production

Whenever we work in a technical-sales environment, this – bar none – is the most valuable idea we bring to the table. Here’s the most obvious symptom of the problem: When salespeople make a technical sale, they inevitably become entangled with production. Their involvement in production cannibalizes their (already limited) business-development capacity – leading to […]

Generating Opportunities

The importance of ‘getting religion’

How to develop an ideology-based business marketing strategy. So you think you’re going to publish a newsletter? Hey, that’s not a bad idea! If you make it an e-mail newsletter — like the one you’re reading now — it’s a particularly cost effective exercise. Your distribution costs are nil. Your publishing costs are equivalent only […]

Slaying Sacred Cows

Is customer service overrated?

I’m sure you’ve attended one of those seminars where a self-proclaimed expert wows the audience with his or her tales of ‘awesome customer service’. Have you ever wondered whether the long-term success of a business really does rest in the hands of grinning bellhops, airline stewards who forward-guess your every need, and receptionists who answer […]

Slaying Sacred Cows

Go ahead. Compete on price!

A message for those business people who insist on competing on price: go ahead! That’s right. If you have a cost advantage, flaunt it. Cut your prices, build marketshare, consolidate that cost advantage and annihilate your competitors. So what’s the catch? Well, to successfully compete on price, you need to be able to manufacture, market […]

Case Studies

The wild man of pharmaceuticals and his even wilder ride to riches!

It’s highly unlikely that any pharmaceutical company would give Peter Nicolas a job! He rarely gets out of bed before 11:00 a.m. He seldom visits his office — and when he does, his only brush with any activity that even resembles work is a noisy tour of his troops, exchanging high-fives and boasting of market […]

Measures and General Management

On pushing string uphill

From time to time, I come across managers who battle valiantly and unflinchingly to accomplish what appears to be downright impossible. To their credit, these noble individuals manage to notch up occasional successes! I even see entire businesses that owe their existence to the belief that, with enough passion, determination and brute force, miracles can […]