Outreach

APRIL 9, 2018

In the beginning of 2017, the SmartRecruiters SDR (sales development representative) program launched its first organized outbound prospecting initiative. Because we sell into enterprise companies, our high-volume approach had two major weaknesses: SDRs spent a significant portion of their time cleaning data and researching contacts.

Assembly Line 68

Assembly Line Customers Contact Represent 68

Partners in Excellence

MAY 26, 2021

Our demand gen, marketing, sales organizational design, sales processes, customer experience—all of it are generally designed around us. They don’t care about our organizational structure, they don’t care about our selling process or strategies for demand gen. We may be trying to hit certain spend/budget goals.

Assembly Line 155

Assembly Line Customers Manufacturing Up-sell 155

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

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. In some ways, sales leaders revel in this. At the time, many of us were alarmed with that statistic.

Assembly Line 142

Assembly Line Sales Price Trust 142

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.

Trust 138

Trust Assembly Line Manufacturing GTM 138

ClickFunnels

JUNE 18, 2021

The post 5 Ways To Increase Sales Online For A Small Business appeared first on ClickFunnels. Wondering how to increase your online sales? Ready to start making more sales than ever? 1 Create a Sales Funnel. 1 Create a Sales Funnel. Here’s the big picture view of it: Top of the sales funnel (ToFu): Target audience.

Minimum Viable Product 228

Minimum Viable Product Assembly Line Niche Sales 228

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 work toward MQLs, turning them over to sales, hopefully as SALs, saying “Good luck and godspeed!, Likewise, sales shouldn’t be waiting for marketing to create awareness and demand.

Assembly Line 106

Assembly Line Sales Process Account management 106

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 9, 2020

They are confronted with confusing information, conflicting data, sales people trying to be “helpful,” yet who seem more interested in their own goals than the buyers.’ Ironically, while buying is getting more personal–more about people relating to people, selling seems to be, increasingly, less so.

Sell 88

Sell Assembly Line High impact Up-sell 88

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

In the face of all this, for the most part we are training our sales people in the same skills I learned many decades ago, and my predecessors learned decades before that. Even concepts of insight based selling are repackaging of consultative, solution, customer focused selling programs of the 60s, 70s, 90s.

Sell 102

Sell Objection handling Assembly Line Territory 102

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Sadly, we have adopted a mechanistic view of business–particularly in selling and management. We stop thinking of our customers as human beings, instead treating them as widgets we move along the sales assembly line. Those assembly lines are failing!

Assembly Line 136

Assembly Line Trust Up-sell Start-ups 136

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 12, 2023

There seems to be an arrogance or conceit in so many of the conversations I see about the future of selling. My feeds are filled with new technologies, new selling models, new engagement strategies, new organizational structures. Sellers have, blindly, applied “manufacturing” technique to managing their selling process.

Assembly Line 120

Assembly Line Customers Tradeshows Manufacturing 120

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. Stated differently, moving more toward selling as a science. Related Posts: Sales, Art, Science, Craft?

Sell 77

Sell Assembly Line Manufacturing Up-sell 77

Partners in Excellence

MAY 25, 2021

There’s a lot of discussion about specialization in sales. We’ve always had specialists in sales and specialization is important. When I started selling, I had the responsibility for growing a very large banking account. Not surprisingly, in our quest for efficiency, overall sales performance has plummeted.

Assembly Line 133

Assembly Line Account management Education Sell 133

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2023

For years, I’ve been writing about the mechanization of selling. Customers have become depersonalized widgets that we move along our selling assembly lines. Our people have become replaceable widgets as well.

Assembly Line 147

Assembly Line Trust Clients Technology 147

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 19, 2021

One of the most important things a sales person can do with her customer is to “understand.” Dr. Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” is a fundamental principle of selling and leadership, yet it is rare that I see this principle exercised. Starting Over.

Assembly Line 112

Assembly Line Drivers/motivators Technique Sell 112

Highspot

JULY 31, 2020

Proactively thinking through how and why your sales organization is set up a certain way ensures that you are not only making strategic hiring decisions but that you’re putting your reps in position to thrive. What does a sales department do? What are the types of sales organizations? How do you structure a sales team?

Assembly Line 72

Assembly Line Territory Strategize Sales 72

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 17, 2018

Sales Talent Is A Problem, Is it Worth Solving , by the folks at CSO Insights. How do we structure the sales organization to be most efficient? How do we reduce the variability in sales people and what they do, creating the lowest cost ability to acquire customers. They have no preference of digital, sales, or any other.

Assembly Line 88

Assembly Line Pitch Sales Growth 88

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 6, 2017

I’ve always been biased more to the science side of selling than the art side. I believe that selling is a disciplined process, that we can “engineer” those processes to increase our impact, customer engagement, and our effectiveness.

Assembly Line 68

Assembly Line SQL Trust Sales 68

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. When customers said tell me more, the sales process was usually pretty short. And assembly line process started to emerge. Initially, this was very predictable.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line GTM Minimum Viable Product Non-Profits 77

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 30, 2020

” “We are expanding our factory capacity and need to add a new assembly line, can we talk about your products as a potential solution?” Don’t they know I don’t sell that stuff? I can see them harvesting email addresses from all sorts of sites, so they can broadcast to sales people.

Prospecting 109

Prospecting Customers Assembly Line Education 109

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 5, 2023

I just listened to an outstanding webcast on the future of selling, conducted by four close friends. I am a student of their work, they are among the smartest thinkers about selling I’ve ever met. It seemed, unconsciously, the conversation around selling gravitates to SaaS selling.

Conversion 71

Conversion Sell Manufacturing Healthcare 71

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

MAY 25, 2024

The underlying principles of all of these is an assembly line mentality in workflow design. In selling we looked at standardized work by starting to segment parts of the selling process. We outlined specific tasks/metrics for marketing, pre-sales, sales development, etc. And we could get reasonable results.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Manufacturing Contract Represent 77

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 13, 2021

For example, no self respecting sales person/manager would find a 20% win rate acceptable. Or we wouldn’t accept average deal values that are significantly lower than our peers, or sales cycles that are significantly longer. So this is a roundabout way to get to my next #B2BPetPeeves, sales/manager turnover and attrition.

Assembly Line 106

Assembly Line Quota Prospecting Up-sell 106

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 5, 2023

Pile onto this all the shifts in buyer behavior we see, increasing numbers of buyers actively disengaging with sellers, preferring to navigate their buying processes with out sales help. Our sequences, our assembly line techniques for herding through processed that are optimized for us will fail!

Customers 132

Customers Assembly Line Commission Technique 132

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

They trade on this friendship, expecting to get preferred treatment in the sales situation. There’s the polar extreme, those who don’t believe relationships are important or meaningful in sales. Connection is critical to our effectiveness as sales people. Andy poses that relationships are about “connection.”

Assembly Line 89

Assembly Line Account management Gaming Sell 89

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 18, 2017

For some weeks, I’ve been on the war path about emerging trends in sales. The focus in much of our discussions on selling is about us–sales people. We see discussions focused on increasing specialization in sales–actually adaptations of the Toyota Production System.

Assembly Line 60

Assembly Line Sell Customers Up-sell 60

Hubspot

JANUARY 31, 2018

I’ve been selling for over 30 years, and it’s been a blast. I’ve seen some incredible changes, and I can say without a doubt that right now is the best time to invest in a sales career. Sales is fun, critically important to scaling businesses, financially lucrative, and intellectually stimulating. The first thing you need to do?

Cold Call 101

Cold Call Assembly Line Inside sales Sales 101

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 12, 2023

So much of what our focus in “modern selling,” seems to be the adaptation of Lean Manufacturing techniques into selling. We’ve created “assembly lines” with specialized functions, passing our customers from one station to the next. We cannot manage or control the variation!

Manufacturing 71

Manufacturing Assembly Line Technique Quota 71

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 1, 2017

Recently, I was having a conversation with Robert Racine about the state of sales management. During the discussion, he mentioned, almost in passing, that too many Sales Managers are becoming Zombies–that is acting purely on autopilot, rather than thinking, evaluating, engaging. But something has changed in selling.

Assembly Line 71

Assembly Line Quota Sales Construction 71

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

Strict sales volume does go a long way in achieving long-term revenue growth, but processes and cross-department alignment are what allow sales volumes to scale in the first place. In a traditional business framework, marketing, sales, and customer success are siloed. Here’s how this might look for sales and marketing: Sales.

Growth 114

Growth Assembly Line Cross-sell Engineering 114

Hubspot

MAY 9, 2022

Even the most seasoned, effective salespeople can struggle when hashing out how to lead a sales team. Taking the reins doesn't come naturally to everyone, and even born leaders might need a little guidance when transitioning into a sales management role. Sales is an inherently competitive field. Let's dive in.

Assembly Line 81

Assembly Line Objectives and Key Results Construction Commission 81

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 31, 2017

We design our organizations to be lean mean selling machines. 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. Sales people move nimbly from tool to tool to tool.

Assembly Line 69

Assembly Line Manufacturing Account management B2B 69

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 6, 2017

As I mentioned in my prior post , there are a lot of people promoting the application of Lean Manufacturing principles in sales. In sales and marketing, we tend, however to be driven by the opposite, we are focused on today, this week, this month, this quarter. The sales process is fundamental.

Manufacturing 72

Manufacturing Assembly Line Sales Process 72

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 8, 2019

Part of the reason is I’ve been consumed with doing my “day job,” which is helping clients drive higher levels of sales performance than they have ever experienced. But the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in a bit of a dark place on the “state of selling.”

Assembly Line 82

Assembly Line Trust Consult Up-sell 82

PandaDoc

OCTOBER 14, 2020

Writers have a style guide, salesmen have a sales playbook , and you should have a central tenet of information. The effort and time being spent on one of these documents should be about refining answers, crafting intelligent and engaging sales pitches, and ensuring the business and its proposal is presented in the best way possible.

Process 139

Process Teamwork Assembly Line Transportation 139

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 22, 2017

I read an article in which the position was put forth, “Inside sales does not have the responsibility for creating pipeline, only the responsibility for selling. The speaker was clearly smart and had been very successful in selling, perhaps there was something I misunderstood. Specialization has been around for decades.

Sell 51

Sell Territory Assembly Line Manufacturing 51

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2016

I’ve always thought sales is more science than art. 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. The problem is, customers are not widgets.

Assembly Line 52

Assembly Line Customers Manufacturing Objectives and Key Results 52