Search

Next up in our series on highly applicable economic principles is one called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the investment your company must make to achieve a sale, and it has a bearing on every company activity associated with a sales cycle. It is applicable equally on the higher level of entrepreneurship as well as ...

Salespeople (Entrepreneurs): What is a “Sunk Cost” and Why Do I Need to Know About It? As we’ve been discussing, salespeople (aka “entrepreneurs within the enterprise”) operate knowingly or unknowingly within a set of precise economic principles. While you might consider that economic theory is something best left to professors in university ivory towers, in ...

If you’re a member of a sales force, or in sales management, there is always practical information you must know. You need to know as much as possible about your own products. You need to have a firm grounding about your particular industry and market. Today especially, in the new sales era, you must have ...

No matter how you slice it, sales management is a tough business. But as with anything, once you gain some stable principles, it does become easier. Here are four primary risks for sales management—and how they might be addressed.

Sales pipeline management is a broad and sometimes daunting subject. But there are some basic guidelines which, if followed, can set your feet firmly on the road to effective management of your own or (if you are in sales management) others’ pipelines.

“Why would a CRM solution have a philosophy?” you might ask. “Philosophy is for heavy thinkers in ivory towers. We’re a company with salespeople. We just want to close deals and move on to the next one so we can make our targets.” But stick with us—you might learn something that could greatly help your ...

CRM solutions—and software solutions in general, really—have always evolved toward visualization. Since the beginning of computing—specifically personal computing—users have been demanding the ability to see what they are doing. It is interesting that despite the long-ago innovations of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) displays and graphical user interfaces, true visualization for CRM ...

For a couple of decades now, business technology pundits have told us we needed a CRM application. IT staff have convinced executives that their companies couldn’t live without one. CRM developers have asserted theirs is the best, with a broad variety of supporting arguments. Yet at the same time, sales forces have continued to complain ...