(The organization’s requirements have radically changed, but everyone’s too scared to break the news to the sales department!) Walk into almost any B2B company today and you’ll find a sales department that looks and behaves pretty much as it did in the 1950s. The same job descriptions, the same compensation plans, the same lone-wolf operating… “Rethinking the Salesperson’s role”
The mistake that we’ve traditionally made in the TOC community is that we ask the question: “How do we improve the performance of the organization?” and then we attempt to answer the question from the perspective of a plant manager!
I’m not here to tell you to delete your organization’s bonus plan. Truth is, it’s probably not doing much harm. So, if you have one—and if your team seems to like it—you should probably leave it in place. My message is that you shouldn’t have one. I’m here to question the reasoning that preceded the… “Why you shouldn’t have a bonus plan”
I spend hours every month trying to reprogram the brains of our clients’ estimators (and their executive teams). The problem is that their entire approach to pricing (and perhaps yours too) is built on a false assumption. The fallacious assumption is that their organizations set prices. The bottom-up approach to pricing If you assume that… “Why everything you’ve ever been told about pricing is wrong (and why a totally different approach is warranted)”
A handoff is effective when there is a rapid change in ownership of the work packet, with a complete absence of conflict. The handoff itself does not create value, but it can destroy value, of course! Value is created by the overarching process. The key to an effective handoff is a full kit. The “kit”… “Why a “full kit” is the key to an effective handoff.”
Your salespeople have finite capacity, and we should probably assume that they are consistently busy. This means that if we ask them to perform an activity, it will be performed in place of another activity. If we consider the pool of possible transactions upstream from your organization, this pool can be divided into two categories:… “Why a commitment to following up every quote is probably costing you money (and handicapping your growth)”
This claim is not wrong. But it’s not helpful either! I’ve spent a week at the nation’s leading distributor conference, listening to executive after executive proclaiming the criticality of local customer relationships, maintained by branch salespeople. Now, on the final day of the conference, McKinsey is presenting survey results, suggesting that customers value availability, price,… “Distributors claim that branch salespeople’s customer relationships are their key value driver.”
A healthy business A healthy business has two value chains: Business as usual (generates operating profit) Growth (generates growth in operating profit) It should not be controversial to suggest that both chains should be optimized for speed. However, in most businesses, these two value chains do not exist in any meaningful sense. You have one… “An Introduction to the Speed-Based Operating System”
Let’s assume you’re a salesperson. You have a compelling proposition for your target customers, but there’s one small problem. Your customers only make purchasing decisions periodically. This means that, most of the time, when you reach out to a prospective customer, they are not interested in having a conversation with you. Before I share the… “If Your Sales Proposition Isn’t Relevant Every Day, It’s Not Relevant at All”
A viable alternative based on Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints Imagine you were to take over the management of a Formula One team, and rather than focusing on the car’s speed, you focused on reducing fuel consumption. That would be stupid, right? Idiotic, even! But this is the orthodox approach to business management. Not surprisingly, the… “Why a focus on cost makes organizations weaker, less profitable, and less competitive”
