I criticized the religion of Inbound Marketing in a previous post. Inbound Marketing: Retards Growth and Turns Marketing Folk into Zombies. I complained that marketing folk were swallowing the dogma and failing to recognize the practical limitations of inbound (or content) marketing. But what I didn’t address are two deeper points: Inbound vs outbound is… “Marketing: Inbound vs Outbound is a False Alternative”
It’s all the rage nowadays. Build a team of Sales Development Reps (or SDRs) to multiply the productivity of your salespeople. Thing is, as anyone who’s watched Boiler Room knows, this is not exactly a new idea. Boiler Room features a New York bucket shop that uses a call center and high-pressure sales techniques to… “If you really like wasting money and annoying prospects then, go ahead, hire a team of Sales Development Reps for your Industrial Sales Company”
I’m getting tired of battling marketing departments over their irrational devotion to Inbound (and Content) Marketing. It seems that marketing folks can’t help but fall violently in love with these concepts, rendering them useless to the rest of the organization. Here’s my beef. I know, from personal experience, that the content marketing thing works, in… “Inbound Marketing: Retards Growth and Turns Marketing Folks into Zombies”
As I write, I’m flying back to LA after attending the Inside Sales Professionals annual conference in Chicago. Today, I presented The Death of Field Sales, an introduction to our inside-out approach to the design of the sales function. Here are my observations on state of the inside-sales community. The good First, inside sales is… “The future is inside sales. It’s just not your momma’s inside sales!”
If it’s true that sacred cows make the best hamburgers, then we’re in for quite a feast! I’ve chosen to close Part One of this book with a frontal assault on the juiciest bovine of all: the unassailable belief that salespeople should be paid commissions. And while I’m at it, I’ll take aim at bonuses,… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 6: The end of commissions, bonuses and other artificial management stimulants”
Case study: Bas Sol, Perth (Australia) If you are a professional-services firm – or if you track and bill time – I think you’ll find this video very interesting. It’s an interview I conducted just before Christmas with Rosie Davidson, the CEO of Bas Sol, a Perth (Australia) based accounting and bookkeeping firm. I must… “Accounting firm abandons time-and-material billing and converts practice to factory: team morale and customer satisfaction up!”
Alejandro Céspedes wrote to me the other day with the following question: Hi Justin Just wanted to ask if you’ve designed a way of managing the sales budget of a company. In other words, how to review if the salespeople are meeting the budget or not. Most companies are affected by the end-of-the-month syndrome, and… “End-of-the-month syndrome and three fallacious assumptions”
Today, on Harvard Business Review Online, Peter Bregman argues: why not having a plan can be the best plan of all. Of course, this is just the latest salvo in a long-running battle between the traditionalists – for whom no plan is ever detailed enough – and the now generation – who see planning as… “Why ‘plan’ versus ‘don’t plan’ is a false alternative”
Late last night I was in conference with a potential client in South Africa (I’m in Australia, right now). Towards the end of our conversation, he asked if I thought much market intelligence could be gleaned from customer surveys. I answered (almost instinctively), data, yes; but, intelligence, no. When pressured for a more coherent answer,… “Customer surveys: data, yes; intelligence, no”
Recently I posted a quick-and-dirty guide to process improvement. One particularly difficult question that I skipped over in that post was this one: When you are mapping your workflow, how do you determine the ideal level of granularity? In other words, how much detail is too much? Conventional wisdom is that: Planning and execution are… “Why better planning equals poorer execution”
