Corporate Sales Guy

This is hot news and will really be interesting to see how the divide between Microsoft CRM and Salesforce will play out.

If you are trying to book appointments with partners and prospects and you end up in voicemail hell I have a few things that have worked well for me:

1. Never call on mondays unless its a specific call to followup on something already in progress.

2. Make your call list the night before with name, phone number and the gist of your call – must be done the night before.

3. Call on Friday especially. Folks have put in a productive week and friday is the day people catch up on reports and planning at their desks. My ratio of answered calls has gotten me to the point where all my appointment setting calls are done only on friday.

4. Have a specific goal for each call. (Eg. Schedule a meeting, demo via webex etc. )

5. Don’t call during lunch, take a lunch and use the opportunity to recharge before hitting the phones again.

Best of luck to you and happy hunting!

I love Dilbert.

In the next few weeks I’d like to write up the ultimate sales force automation / CRM integration wish list and see what others think of it.

I saw this article at zenhabits and had to share it.

Almost without fail I’ve worked for companies that have had separate business units selling the same products in full compete capacity. These teams rarely reported to the same execs and this generally played into a long term demise of revenue growth. Some of the items I’ve witnessed 1st hand:

1. Keeping notes in the CRM/SFA system incomplete and without names and phones numbers of important contacts.

2. Beating out another team within the company by offering better discounts than they.

3. Fear of cross-selling with another team based on the idea that the other team may steal an account – this results in leads that are sent outside of the company all together usually in return for leads or favors.

4. Decreased morale throughout the sales organization.

5. Poor usage of resources within the company when newly founded teams require more support than the incumbent sales force.

6. Higher overhead and expense. Multiple teams need multiple managers, directors and VP’s.

7. Higher turnover in all the teams based on deals lost internally.

I guess I write this in an effort to understand why companies employ such silly strategies. I have heard 1st hand accounts of car sales people “misplacing” keys to popular cars on the lot so that they can show/demo the car to their clients and earn the sale. This sounds to be very similar and I guess it will be one of those things that I never will understand.

The Dilbert Principal is an excellent book written by Scott Adams, I highly recommend it anyone who is facing re-orgs, corporate downsizing or just general angst in the workplace to check it out.