Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 20, 2020

Amy Volas wrote, “Is Sales Over-segmented,” Bob Apollo wrote, “Has role specialisation in B2B selling gone too far?” Much of their discussion has to do with the current mechanization of selling that’s become popular in the SDR/AE approach to selling. Likewise, selling is more complex.

Assembly Line 147

Assembly Line Manufacturing Sales Up-sell 147

Partners in Excellence

MAY 25, 2024

The underlying principles of all of these is an assembly line mentality in workflow design. In selling we looked at standardized work by starting to segment parts of the selling process. The greater the variation, the more likely the assembly line would fail to meet it’s objectives.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Manufacturing Contract Represent 77

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 8, 2024

” A mindset instilled in each worker in the assembly line was, “how do you improve the part of the process you are responsible for?” Are there things that get in the way that we should stop (the selling equivalent of removing 14 useless circuits from a circuit board)? How can we make things simpler?

Assembly Line 130

Assembly Line GTM Manufacturing Engineering 130

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Sadly, we have adopted a mechanistic view of business–particularly in selling and management. We stop thinking of our customers as human beings, instead treating them as widgets we move along the sales assembly line. Those assembly lines are failing!

Assembly Line 115

Assembly Line Trust Up-sell Start-ups 115

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 5, 2023

I just listened to an outstanding webcast on the future of selling, conducted by four close friends. I am a student of their work, they are among the smartest thinkers about selling I’ve ever met. It seemed, unconsciously, the conversation around selling gravitates to SaaS selling.

Conversion 71

Conversion Sell Manufacturing Healthcare 71

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 9, 2020

Ironically, while buying is getting more personal–more about people relating to people, selling seems to be, increasingly, less so. Relationships were fundamental to sales and selling in distant times. Buying is about people, great selling is too! We Don't Lose Because Of What We Sell!

Sell 85

Sell Assembly Line High impact Up-sell 85

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 12, 2023

There seems to be an arrogance or conceit in so many of the conversations I see about the future of selling. My feeds are filled with new technologies, new selling models, new engagement strategies, new organizational structures. Sellers have, blindly, applied “manufacturing” technique to managing their selling process.

Assembly Line 100

Assembly Line Customers Tradeshows Manufacturing 100

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 12, 2023

So much of what our focus in “modern selling,” seems to be the adaptation of Lean Manufacturing techniques into selling. We’ve created “assembly lines” with specialized functions, passing our customers from one station to the next. We cannot manage or control the variation!

Manufacturing 71

Manufacturing Assembly Line Technique Quota 71

Partners in Excellence

MAY 26, 2021

They don’t care about our organizational structure, they don’t care about our selling process or strategies for demand gen. Somehow mechanization, specialization, and efficiency drive our decisions for engaging customers in our selling process. And it may work, or maybe for some time. Inevitably, it doesn’t work.

Assembly Line 142

Assembly Line Customers Manufacturing Start-ups 142

Martech

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

In large organizations, sometimes sales doesn’t know who marketing is marketing to, and marketing doesn’t know who sales really wants to sell to. ” In a nutshell, Account Profile Explorer “shortens the assembly line of the sales and marketing flow.” ” A unified view of B2B buying and selling.

Assembly Line 102

Assembly Line Contract B2C GTM 102

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 15, 2021

We redesign knowledge work, emulating the principles of the industrial assembly lines of the past. We chop up work, creating assembly lines where knowledge workers focus on perhaps the functional equivalent of tightening a bolt. them passing the work to the next person in the knowledge worker assembly line.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Manufacturing Government Up-sell 77

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

We are creating massive sales assembly lines optimizing the order taking process. We nurture them until they have done much of the work, then we engage them running them through our sales assembly line of qualifying, demoing, pitching, proposing, closing. At the same time, we see data that is alarming.

Assembly Line 127

Assembly Line Sales Price Trust 127

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 10, 2018

At the end, Brent Adamson pulled me to the side asking, “Dave, you seem to have a pretty dark outlook about selling, what’s up?” Am I contributing to it’s improvement and the ability of sales to contribute to our customers and the companies we sell for?” The mindless focus on volume/velocity.

Sell 82

Sell Assembly Line Up-sell Cold Call 82

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Even concepts of insight based selling are repackaging of consultative, solution, customer focused selling programs of the 60s, 70s, 90s. Even concepts of insight based selling are repackaging of consultative, solution, customer focused selling programs of the 60s, 70s, 90s. But there are limitations to this.

Sell 94

Sell Objection handling Assembly Line Territory 94

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2023

For years, I’ve been writing about the mechanization of selling. Customers have become depersonalized widgets that we move along our selling assembly lines. Our people have become replaceable widgets as well.

Assembly Line 141

Assembly Line Trust Clients Technology 141

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 21, 2017

We seem to be approaching or passing the tipping point where leading sales practitioners view successful selling as a disciplined, focused, engineered approach to engaging and creating value for customers. Stated differently, moving more toward selling as a science. We’ve focused more on the mechanics and less on the people.

Sell 72

Sell Assembly Line Manufacturing Up-sell 72

Salesforce

JULY 28, 2022

Any disruption to an assembly line or a delivery fleet can bring operations to a standstill, putting pressure on manufacturers to fix the issue as soon as possible. Watch this video, featuring Salesforce’s Andy Peebler, to learn how manufacturers can benefit from creating a parts business: Why sell parts online?

Original Equipment Manufacturer 52

Original Equipment Manufacturer Manufacturing Assembly Line Sell 52

Highspot

JULY 31, 2020

After all, you wouldn’t put a new recruit in charge of your enterprise accounts; similarly, a rep with deep experience in healthcare would probably struggle to sell into tech. There are three main models for sales teams: the assembly line, the pod, and the island. The Assembly Line. Is not suited to scale.

Assembly Line 72

Assembly Line Territory Strategize Sales 72

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018

The overall marketing/sales assembly line takes customers through this linear process, all oriented to moving the customer through a buying decision. Except our assembly line/linear customer engagement model doesn’t reflect how our customers buy.

Assembly Line 96

Assembly Line Sales Process Account management 96

Partners in Excellence

MAY 25, 2021

When I started selling, I had the responsibility for growing a very large banking account. The customer has become almost irrelevant, instead, we have optimized roles for moving our customer through our sales assembly line. Related Posts: Optimizing Part Of The Selling Function,… Tag, You're It!

Assembly Line 124

Assembly Line Account management Education Sell 124

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 19, 2021

Dr. Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” is a fundamental principle of selling and leadership, yet it is rare that I see this principle exercised. They are not widgets to be passed from sales specialist to sales specialist down our sales assembly line.

Assembly Line 101

Assembly Line Drivers/motivators Technique Sell 101

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

We’re also brought to you by Vidyard — the best way to sell in a virtual world, whether you need to connect with more leads, qualify more opportunities, or close more deals. Make prospecting videos, follow-ups, product demos, and other communications that drive virtual selling. Why prospecting sits apart from sales [6:59].

Commission 90

Commission Quota Assembly Line Sales 90

Spiro Technologies

OCTOBER 20, 2022

On this podcast, I talk with company leaders about how they’re modernizing the business of making, moving, selling products, and of course, having fun along the way. We were working with a customer who had an assembly line and they had a couple stations along their assembly line. Transcript. podcast at Spiro.ai/podcast

Sell 52

Sell Manufacturing Assembly Line Technology 52

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 30, 2020

” “We are expanding our factory capacity and need to add a new assembly line, can we talk about your products as a potential solution?” Don’t they know I don’t sell that stuff? . “We are looking to buy electronic components to use in a new consumer product we are developing.

Prospecting 108

Prospecting Customers Assembly Line Education 108

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 18, 2017

The focus in much of our discussions on selling is about us–sales people. We have highly focused roles, each role focuses on it’s job in the sales process, once complete, the widget–I mean customer, is passed to the next function, then the next, then the next… on down the sales assembly line.

Assembly Line 56

Assembly Line Sell Customers Up-sell 56

Spiro Technologies

OCTOBER 5, 2022

Adam Honig: Hello and welcome to Make It, Move It, Sell It. On this podcast, I talk with company leaders about how they’re modernizing the business of making, moving and selling products. Assembly operations don’t look the same as the old model T assembly line. Transcript. Adam Honig: Yeah.

Manufacturing 59

Manufacturing Sell Construction Electricity 59

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

The struggles have less to do with choosing what to buy, yet sellers tend to focus on what they are selling. We view the process as a transaction, moving the customer from person to person on our sales assembly lines. We don’t take the time to build relationships and trust.

Assembly Line 48

Assembly Line Trust Up-sell B2B 48

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 5, 2023

Our sequences, our assembly line techniques for herding through processed that are optimized for us will fail! Given what they now face, they need–and will demand more! But sellers will have to respond very differently than we have traditionally responded. While they may address our needs, they do nothing for the customer.

Customers 115

Customers Assembly Line Commission Technique 115

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 13, 2021

And, while I will contradict my opening premises, too much of the time, in seeking “predictable revenue,” we treat every aspect of selling as laws etched in granite. They recognize the real value in the organization has nothing to do with what they sell, or the tools, programs, processes, and so forth.

Assembly Line 96

Assembly Line Quota Prospecting Start-ups 96

Gong.io

APRIL 28, 2021

Our solution can save your reps 30% in admin time, so they’ll have more time to sell (really?), will sell more (really??), a factory assembly line). Here’s what an overcomplicated value story with unreasonable value attribution looks like: . and will get your revenue up by 30% (really???). .

Assembly Line 71

Assembly Line Manufacturing Drivers/motivators Strategize 71

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 30, 2023

Whether it’s specialization in how we move our customers through the “sales assembly line.” We focus our skills development on product training and selling skills. ” how we staff these roles, how we look at new and current customers.

Assembly Line 62

Assembly Line High impact Quota Technique 62

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 6, 2017

I’ve always been biased more to the science side of selling than the art side. I believe that selling is a disciplined process, that we can “engineer” those processes to increase our impact, customer engagement, and our effectiveness. I find myself in an unusual position. Much of this seems to be a R 3.0

Assembly Line 60

Assembly Line SQL Trust Sales 60

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

Often, these are those with the assembly line version of selling, optimizing our process, treating the customer as a widget they move through the process—lead, SDR, Demo, Account Manager, Specialist, Customer Experience Team… The customer is an object upon which we execute our selling process, working the numbers.

Assembly Line 88

Assembly Line Account management Gaming Sell 88

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 22, 2017

I read an article in which the position was put forth, “Inside sales does not have the responsibility for creating pipeline, only the responsibility for selling. The speaker was clearly smart and had been very successful in selling, perhaps there was something I misunderstood. The concept of “team selling” arose.

Sell 49

Sell Territory Assembly Line Manufacturing 49

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 31, 2017

We design our organizations to be lean mean selling machines. Prospectors prospect, account managers account manage, product line specialists are expert in their product lines, and on and on… Each role is precisely defined, we have the metrics to by which we constantly measure performance.

Assembly Line 63

Assembly Line Manufacturing Account management B2B 63

Hubspot

MAY 9, 2022

The Assembly Line — a model where reps work on designated responsibilities, specific to a certain pipeline stage. Keeping your team siloed from other departments at your company creates unnecessary friction and prevents your reps from having a fully realized picture of who they're selling to.

Assembly Line 77

Assembly Line Objectives and Key Results Construction Commission 77

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2016

I believe selling is a set of disciplined processes, many of which can be “engineered” to optimize our ability to engage the right customers/prospects, with the right conversations, at the right time. One begins to see images of assembly lines with customers on a conveyor belt moving from station to station.

Assembly Line 49

Assembly Line Customers Manufacturing Objectives and Key Results 49