Selling Power TV Interview: Does Your Sales Process Create Value?
Gerhard Gschwandtner interviews Michael Webb on Selling Power TV:
Quote for Lean Process Excellence managers:
“What happens in organizations is that the [production] bottleneck, when you uncover it, you solve it, and then the bottleneck moves to someplace else, and you solve that, and that is how performance improves. And that is one of the huge advantages process excellence brings to businesses.
Because the way sales and marketing is managed now is just somebody’s hunch. Hey, I think the problem with our sales and marketing is … I think it is time and territory management training, so let’s do that. One solution, another solution, and they never define the problem!”
Gerhard’s questions:
Why did you write the book?
“I had the opportunity to learn how process excellence worked in manufacturing, and I always wondered how come you couldn’t apply that wonderful business system to sales and marketing …”
Can you give us a case example?
“Threaded throughout the book is a client who sold water filtration. Their first bottleneck was in the keeping – customer service – side of the business. …”
Help me understand the relationship between strategy and process, and how do we get alignment?
“Market research (and strategy) might tell you where the most fruitful parts of the market are, but process is going to give you the feedback and allow you to do the experiments that you can learn in order to optimize …”
“I see anything that is not connected directly to measurements of data and evidence – people’s actions – as pretty useless. Unfortunately strategy is often just associated with big ideas …”
A full transcript of this interview is available in the professional members area of SPIF. This was a great opportunity to explain Sales Process Excellence in a nut-shell. Let me know what you think!
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Order your copy of Sales Process Excellence today.
Michael