Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 7, 2024

Continuing my series on applying lean/agile manufacturing principles to selling, I was reminded by Charles Green and Dave Jackson about an important aspect of these principles that is never mentioned by those promoting lean/agile in our sales assembly lines. It’s called Jidoka or Autonomation. It’s almost the opposite!

Trust 139

Trust Assembly Line Manufacturing GTM 139

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018

We continue to organize our sales and marketing initiatives around what makes us more efficient or old views of how customers buy. The overall marketing/sales assembly line takes customers through this linear process, all oriented to moving the customer through a buying decision.

Assembly Line 119

Assembly Line Sales Process Account management 119

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 30, 2020

It’s customers prospecting–looking for solutions to their problems. ” “We are expanding our factory capacity and need to add a new assembly line, can we talk about your products as a potential solution?” But customers have an analog to what we do in prospecting. Customers do prospect.

Prospecting 114

Prospecting Customers Assembly Line Education 114

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

It’s become common “wisdom” that we have to align align our sales process with our customers’ buying processes. I suppose it’s easy to want to believe customers have buying processes. Certainly, procurement has processes they follow in their buying activities.

Process 71

Process Customers Assembly Line Manufacturing 71

PandaDoc

OCTOBER 14, 2020

The Request For Proposal (RFP) process is broken, flawed, and disorganized. When you’re down in the weeds, entangled in the messy process, it can be hard to figure out how to make improvements. If you were to time your RFP creation process, how much time gets sunk into each one? Luckily, technology is our saving grace.

Process 139

Process Teamwork Assembly Line Transportation 139

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

In complex B2B buying, it’s popular to talk about being consultative and/or creating value with our customers. We talk about sales people as problem solvers, working with our customers to identify and help solve their problems. We are creating massive sales assembly lines optimizing the order taking process.

Assembly Line 143

Assembly Line Sales Price Trust 143

Partners in Excellence

JULY 11, 2024

Look at the portion of revenue from net new logos versus current customers buying again. Early stage companies will be biased to net new logos, but as they mature, the balance of revenue shifts to current customers. It becomes critical to get customers retain customers, for them to continue to buy or to buy again.

Assembly Line 138

Assembly Line Manufacturing GTM CRM 138

Hubspot

AUGUST 20, 2021

Many organizations fail to outline and document procedures when it comes to producing products, handling service concerns, or guiding their customers along their buyer’s journey. There’s a way to make your employees’ lives easier and customers happy — all while differentiating yourself from the competition. Customer Service.

Process 93

Process Assembly Line Profit margin Sales 93

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 12, 2024

Rather, it requires process, structure, discipline and collaboration with customers to help them improve their business outcomes. I was fortunate to have a great mentor who embraced the notion that sales is work, and all work is a process. I’m highly competitive, with myself as well as against customers’ alternatives to me.

Sell 143

Sell Assembly Line Territory Sports 143

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 8, 2024

” “Can we improve processes upstream, by helping our suppliers improve what they are doing with us?” ” “Can we the downstream experience of our customers?” ” A mindset instilled in each worker in the assembly line was, “how do you improve the part of the process you are responsible for?”

Assembly Line 139

Assembly Line GTM Manufacturing Engineering 139

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 31, 2023

” Too many view customers and prospects as objects we have to overcome or as the objects that stand in the way of our ability to achieve our goals. I used to joke, “Selling would be great if it weren’t for those damn customers!” For the past 15 years, we have had such a focus on mechanizing the process.

Sell 147

Sell Assembly Line Growth Prospecting 147

Sales Hacker

MARCH 3, 2021

Isn’t it ultra-satisfying to watch a perfectly automated factory assembly line? That’s how your customer experience should be. Salespeople create relationships, but it has traditionally been up to the customer success or account management team to nurture them. What is the handoff process?

Process 97

Process Assembly Line Drivers/motivators UX 97

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2016

I believe selling is a set of disciplined processes, many of which can be “engineered” to optimize our ability to engage the right customers/prospects, with the right conversations, at the right time. Even to the point that some commoditized or repeat buys are completely automated on the customer and supplier sides.

Assembly Line 61

Assembly Line Customers Manufacturing Objectives and Key Results 61

ClickFunnels

JUNE 18, 2021

Middle of the sales funnel (MoFu): Potential customers. Bottom of the sales funnel (BoFu): New and existing customers. You offer the potential customer a freebie known as a lead magnet in exchange for their email address. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product. Create SEO Content.

Minimum Viable Product 229

Minimum Viable Product Assembly Line Niche Sales 229

Partners in Excellence

MAY 25, 2021

I focused on understanding my customer, identifying opportunities to grow, and building our value with the customers. While I had good knowledge of the customer and good knowledge of our core products, I wouldn’t have been successful without the help of specialists.

Assembly Line 133

Assembly Line Account management Education Sell 133

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 29, 2016

There are all sorts of phrases like, “people buy from people,” which ascribe the importance of building relationships with our customers. Yet, it seems that too much of how we actually manage the customer engagement life cycle seems to ignore the importance of developing relationships with our customers.

Assembly Line 61

Assembly Line Customers Trust CRM 61

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 9, 2020

The buying process is messy, a characteristic of intensely human interaction. We map the buying process, ending up with something that resembles Gartner’s famous “spaghetti” charts. Buying can be confusing–both in managing the internal buying process, but in, also, in assessing the alternative solutions.

Sell 97

Sell Assembly Line High impact Up-sell 97

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 18, 2017

We have highly focused roles, each role focuses on it’s job in the sales process, once complete, the widget–I mean customer, is passed to the next function, then the next, then the next… on down the sales assembly line. Ironically, customers are the sole reason for sales people to exist!

Assembly Line 71

Assembly Line Sell Customers Up-sell 71

Partners in Excellence

MAY 23, 2024

Since the target customers, initially, for these tools were individuals and small teams, the methods others had used in consumer product selling were adapted. Since the investment was small, the risk to the customer was small, just like in consumer products. When customers said tell me more, the sales process was usually pretty short.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line GTM Minimum Viable Product Non-Profits 77

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 6, 2017

I believe that selling is a disciplined process, that we can “engineer” those processes to increase our impact, customer engagement, and our effectiveness. I believe in sharp, rigorous execution of those processes in driving sales effectiveness and performance.

Assembly Line 82

Assembly Line SQL Trust Sales 82

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 23, 2022

Again, one never had to do this, we knew “calls” included virtually every interchange with the customer–a meeting, a conversation whether virtually by or by the phone. First, they are rarely customized to the victim we on who we inflict the outreach. First, I need to define what a “call” is.

Assembly Line 115

Assembly Line Meeting Quota Customers 115

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 31, 2017

Each step of our sales process is optimized to maximize the results our sales people get. We recognize different skills and capabilities are needed in different stages of the sales process. We start feeding customers through our process, moving them from person to person. ” But we persist, as do our customers.

Assembly Line 82

Assembly Line Manufacturing Account management B2B 82

Partners in Excellence

MAY 25, 2024

If we look at the “founders” of the SaaS concept, it was innovators adapting and assembling bits and pieces of other business models to create a new approach. But that model is no longer serving customers or SaaS companies well, so we need to innovate. The most misunderstood is the concept of “Predictable Revenue.”

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Manufacturing Contract Represent 77

Search Engine Land

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Customer data platform (CDP) vendors also help marketers craft personalized messages. Enhanced collaboration Planning a marketing campaign often involves an assembly line that takes ideas from concept to reality and then introduces them to the market across various channels. But the easier tools are to use the better.

Campaign 92

Campaign Assembly Line Launch Government 92

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

Their approach is to exploit the “relationship,” but not the value they create in helping the customer achieve their goals. Neither of those extremes is about relationships, neither of these extremes understands the importance of relationships with our customers. Andy poses that relationships are about “connection.”

Assembly Line 93

Assembly Line Account management Gaming Sell 93

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 15, 2021

We redesign knowledge work, emulating the principles of the industrial assembly lines of the past. We chop up work, creating assembly lines where knowledge workers focus on perhaps the functional equivalent of tightening a bolt. them passing the work to the next person in the knowledge worker assembly line.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Manufacturing Government Up-sell 77

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

And we have the convergence of information overwhelm, increased sources of distraction, accelerating change, and skyrocketing complexity–in our customers markets, in their own organizations, with competition/partners, and within our own organization. At the same time, sales performance continues to stagnate or even decline.

Sell 116

Sell Objection handling Assembly Line Territory 116

Martech

JANUARY 25, 2022

“Today, marketing is no longer about grabbing attention, but about creating real connections, building that emotional resonance, and spurring action throughout the customer journey,” said Nina Butler, Director of Event Experience at Alyce, in her presentation at our MarTech conference. Deliver “interest” events to customers.

Assembly Line 98

Assembly Line Prospecting Contact Customers 98

Highspot

JULY 31, 2020

How you organize your sales team will be determined by the regions you serve, the number of products and services you offer, the size of your sales team, and the size and industry of your customers. Prepares sellers for customer engagements via training and onboarding activities. The Assembly Line.

Assembly Line 72

Assembly Line Territory Strategize Sales 72

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 12, 2023

We’ve created “assembly lines” with specialized functions, passing our customers from one station to the next. If, somehow, in the manufacturing process, an error is made, we create “scrap.” It, also, means that we fail to meet a customer commitment.

Manufacturing 71

Manufacturing Assembly Line Technique Quota 71

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 13, 2021

They recognize the real value in the organization has nothing to do with what they sell, or the tools, programs, processes, and so forth. Likewise customers are widgets in our sales assembly line. Look At Our Dashboards" Is Your Customer Prepared For This Meeting? The post The Problem With The Data….

Assembly Line 107

Assembly Line Quota Prospecting Up-sell 107

Heinz Marketing

APRIL 27, 2020

If instead you share with the seagulls where their project fits into the priority list and why, if they agree with the higher priorities, they generally fall in line. Better to create a strategic product marketing plan up front to ensure the development work (big and small) aligns strategically based on what your customers need.

Assembly Line 98

Assembly Line GTM Strategize Follow-up 98

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 21, 2017

We seem to be approaching or passing the tipping point where leading sales practitioners view successful selling as a disciplined, focused, engineered approach to engaging and creating value for customers. I hope we no longer live by the mantra, “When the going gets tough, the tough take a customer to lunch/golf.”

Sell 89

Sell Assembly Line Manufacturing Up-sell 89

Martech

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Vendors in the customer data platform (CDP) space also help marketers craft personalized messages. Campaign management tools that establish deadlines and responsibilities ensure the assembly line keeps moving. Customer support and service Even with training, your team is likely to hit some snags along the way.

Campaign 81

Campaign Assembly Line Launch Government 81

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 6, 2017

The right process will produce the right results: Principle 2: Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface. Principle 6: Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment. Both our people and customer get confused with these constant shifts.

Manufacturing 86

Manufacturing Assembly Line Sales Process 86

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 17, 2018

How do we reduce the variability in sales people and what they do, creating the lowest cost ability to acquire customers. If we structure our engagement process to be more transactional, the assembly line process becomes very attractive. It seems the customers are voting by their actions and they are voting no.

Assembly Line 88

Assembly Line Pitch Sales Growth 88

InsightSquared

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

The Japanese term “Kaizen” stands for the continuous improvement of a process. Adopted by Japanese manufacturing companies after World War II as a way to reduce waste and create competitive advantage, kaizen evolved beyond the assembly line in manufacturing to all business processes and became the precursor to lean manufacturing.

GTM 73

GTM Assembly Line Manufacturing SQL 73