Customer service

Now Everybody Has a Front Office

Front Office is rapidly becoming a modern generic term. Everybody seems to be recognising the need to have a Front Office, but I wonder if they’ve done the extra thinking about processes and systems. Without the right philosophy and tools any Front Office is nothing more than a new name for the typical call centre, [...]

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Waving to Myself – Am I Really That Sad

CRM

Image by avlxyz via Flickr Google Wave Matures, or does it? Has Google Wave come of age as a business tool? Does it have a role in Customer Service and CRM applications. Will it be a natural component in any company IT architecture? We’ve been trying it out again to find out the answers to [...]

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Consultants CRM for Smart Professionals

Solving Information Problems

Consultants need smart, intelligent CRM software to match the way they work. Creating value for clients depends upon insight to understand problems, imagination to design solutions, and flexibility to implement them – no two jobs are the same. Creating value for themselves on the other hand depends upon organisation of resources and efficient operations. CRM [...]

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Always be prepared to walk away.

Sales Coach

Being ready to qualify out of a sale usually will mean we don’t have too. Some sales deals we just don’t need, or want. When the customer gets too difficult, wanting too much for too little, we should qualify out of the sale and walk away from the deal. Strangely, always being prepared to walk [...]

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What Is Your Sales Strategy, How Well Does It Work

Sales Manager

Sales strategy is the fundamental element of any business plan. Most advice on business planning misses it out, focusing on revenue, costs and cash instead. Presumably because the people giving that advice know nothing about selling and wouldn’t recognise a sales strategy if it bit them in the behind. But knowing how we’re going to [...]

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Sales Training Ideas Which Work

Sales Manager

Training sales people is a problem faced by all business managers and especially training sales people newly joining our business. Whatever they’ve learned in previous roles doesn’t fit with our particular way of doing things. They may be accomplished hunters, closers and farmers but they still won’t understand our special value proposition – what makes [...]

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Learning Business Lessons from the Golf Caddie

Starting a business

Business lessons from golf caddies sounds hard to believe. Popularly seen as roguish, itinerant, irresponsible journeymen the golf caddie doesn’t come naturally to mind as a font of business acumen. Until you’ve seen both sides of the coin, that is. Through my career I’ve sold everything from outsourcing to debt collection, and from mainframes to [...]

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Making Waves Makes More Sense Now

CRM

Image via Wikipedia Google Wave was probably the most eagerly awaited software technology in history. Those guys did an awesome job of pre-announcing the release and the world waited with baited breath. It seems Google must have learned a lesson with Wave, because only a few months later the company let Buzz seep out. No [...]

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Getting It Right With Checklists

Management Built In

CheckLists have been helping us organise our thoughts since te beginning of time and despite all the technological innovations they remain fundamental to the way we get things done. For a simple explanation of the power of check lists with review process take a few minutes to read Mathew E May’s How To Get Things [...]

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Sales Pipeline Management Isn’t CRM

Pipeline Management

Sales Pipeline Management isn’t the same as CRM even though most people put the two together. Actually they get confused by all the B/S they come across on the web. Unfortunately there are too many who know nothing about either publishing about both. So the world has this murky picture of contact management, sales force [...]

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