Creating Sales Standard Work

Many people/organizations struggle in creating a sales workflow. It is usually to confining or on the opposite end nonexistent. In my thinking, Standard Work is what creates the WOW in the sales process. However, Standards are the most fundamental and misunderstood concept. Your standards are the way you go about what you do and how Read More …

Are you developing WICKED Salespeople?

Most sales opportunities are just not that obvious anymore that seems to be the job of automation, not sales. However, are we enabling salespeople to handle wicked problems? Are we training them in the areas of exploration, scenarios, emergence & sensemaking? Wicked Problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem Cynefin Framework: https://cognitive-edge.com/

How We Learn – Dissonance

Using Lean Thinking in the fields of sales and marketing and to some extent, the more softer-feely approach of Toyota Kata seems very mechanical. I was reviewing a video from Solution Tree and enjoyed the terminology of the cycle of learning they used especially the word dissonance. It describes the area of tension that exists Read More …

Understand the Purpose Behind the Question

The ability to ask good questions is essential in today’s world. However, as Stephen Covey categorized in one of his 7 Habits; “Seek first to Understand, then to be understood.” Or another way Dale Carnegie phrased this, “To be interesting, be interested.” To accomplish this, I think one of the areas that most of could work Read More …

Be The Change

What if we stop trying to solve problems for customers? What if the customer left with the thought of What If? Problem-solving has been commoditized. It is an idea that has been widely spread with a great deal of research. A few examples: Dan Pink aspires to this thinking in his book, To Sell is Human that problem-solving Read More …

Should We be Paying Learning Commissions?

In recent times, you have seen more of my thinking moving from outcome-based to more process driven metrics. For the simple reason that it creates real-time measurements. We can no longer wait until the end to make adjustments. There is probably no area that is being impacted more significantly than the traditional sales and affiliate Read More …