Special Topics

Qualification Criteria

Qualification criteria are the observable characteristics of your sales opportunities that make them more or less likely to buy from you. Sales teams benefit greatly when they work out qualification criteria in great detail. Ideally this means they are put in the form of questions salespeople can score on a five-point Likert scale. This scale […]

Units of Production

Production is work that creates something of value.  Farming produces crops. Manufacturing produces products. Sales produce customers. Production requires input, a process, and output. It creates value in stages, and these stages need to be operationally defined and measured if the goal is to maximize output and minimize input. In manufacturing, the most rudimentary classification […]

Operational Definitions

Operational definitions are a foundational principle in process excellence.  They are a means of using language precisely to ensure a group of people can connect the meaning of a term to observable reality. If a measurement is generated, the operational definition specifies the procedure for doing so. Operational definitions are crucial in all scientific and […]