Once again I showed a tip to a sales rep that is so simple but so effective.  The application we are using is ACT, but this could be done with any CRM. We were going over his processes and were discussing how to make his sales calls more effective.  Lately, we are spending quite a bit of time doing business and sales coaching.  One thing that frustrated my client was going out to call on someone and they were not there or had been called away.  This happens quite a lot, even

In an interesting dialog last week, KPIs, or key performance indicators, were the topic but it occurred to me during the discussion that it meant different things to the participants on the call.  That inspried me to write this blog article. What do KPI's mean? And what do they mean to you and your organization. Wikipedia says: "A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. An organization may use KPIs to evaluate its success, or to

When you hear the term ROI, I am betting you are thinking money.  When I buy this stock, what will be my return.  If I invest in a business, will I get my money back. According to Wikipedia, ROI, or Return on Investment “is the concept of an investment of some resource yielding a benefit to the investor.”  Basically it means whatever you invest, be it money, time or effort, you are expecting some form of benefit. Often I am asked by clients to help them get across

Recently, I read a great article talking about calling prospects.  The main point of the article was that not all leads were equal - you needed to mix it up when reaching out to potential clients.   One of the questions people often ask is how many times should a prospect be called before you give up and call it a dead lead.  The article said it depended on the size of the business.  Smaller business owners were able to make decisions quicker while larger organizations had "

Years and years ago, I presented a session at a conference and called it My Nirvana model.  The drawing to the left is what I presented at the time.  Basically the premise was having a model to find the proper platform for your business application.  The arrows on the chart meant the price went up based on various parameters. The key point I was making with the presentation though was to not only worry about the platform but to ensure you were asking the right questions in

Recently, two of my customers suffered huge business losses because their applications were unaccessbile on their cloud solutions.  I am not a proponent of putting everything in the cloud for just this reason.  These clients were ones who went down this path because someone else suggested that putting every business process in the Cloud was a “good thing.”  Well, yes, until the cloud is not available. For one customer, it cost them over $50,000 to be down for a day.  A

Ever wanted to put together a dog and pony show to demonstrate your services and products? Of course.  Did you think it would take lots of time and money?  You would think that setting this up would probably be a major undertaking that would be a huge time-drain.  I thought so as well.  The first time I had an opportunity to put on a roadshow, I only had a 3 week  advance notice.  At the time, I was very busy and needed to come up with ways to make this happen

This week I had an interesting conversation with a client. They know we, as a business, are active on social media and are seeing benefits.  My customer has been dabbling in the space for a while but is finding it too hard to keep up with the effort and is considering allowing their employees to also participate in helping with social media.  They asked me what is the right approach to take and after our discussion I realized it would make a good blog article. Social media and the