As we’ve deployed the Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation software platform for our customers we noticed a few common challenges around the area of Pipeline Management.  In the first instance, customers are often puzzled as to how to create the structure of the pipeline. Then they worry about how to keep the funnel full and whether to focus on pipeline volume or pipeline velocity. Finally we’ve been asked frequently to explain the ‘secret sauce’ that Dealmaker uses to identify pipeline risks or potential breakdown.

Here are four of the best practices lessons that our customers have learned by using Dealmaker.

1. Map the Pipeline Structure to […]

Just a few weeks ago, in San Francisco, I had the privilege of meeting with some of the guiding forces of the Web 2.0 world.  We got together to brainstorm how technology could be leveraged to help the folks at the WITNESS charity carry out their important work.  (You might remember from a previous post that WITNESS, which was founded by musician Peter Gabriel, uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.) In the room were LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, Steve Chen - founder of Youtube, Joi Ito - CEO of Creative Commons and many others. These folks are […]

I love it when a plan comes together, particularly when that involves one of our customers gaining huge payoff from implementing Dealmaker.  Recently, I received a copy of an article in CRM Magazine in which (unknown to me) a customer of ours - Fleetpartners, a fleet leasing company in Australia - recounted their real-life experience of implementing a CRM and Dealmaker.  The full article is available to view at CRM Magazine, but I thought it worthwhile to share the experience with you.

First the payoff:- According to the article, since turning to Dealmaker, Fleetpartners has:

• realized a 400 percent increase in new business contracts in 2009
• increased pipeline […]

I had the pleasure of meeting recently with John Kirkham, Ex EVP Global Sales at Open Text.   He has some enlightened views on how companies can best deliver improved sales performance.  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will notice some philosophical alignment.  He was recently interviewed in a Business Leader Perspective context, and I’m happy to share the output of that interview.

In search of the Holy Grail

Three decades of building and rebuilding enterprise sales teams in the IT sector, on both sides of the pond, has been a challenging and at times extraordinarily frustrating experience. My […]

I was with one of my sales team recently when he was demonstrating Dealmaker to a prospective customer. (Dealmaker is the Sales Performance Automation software platform that we provide to help sales people win more deals.) One of the modules in Dealmaker guides the sales person to select the right competitive strategy to win the sale.  Based on the information entered during the demo, Dealmaker recommended a Fragment Strategy.

The customer, who was keen golfer, nodded his head, and said “Yep, it’s just like golf - sometimes you’ve got to just lay up.”  I thought that was good analogy and worth […]

Over the past few years we observed (in a measurable and analytical sense) tens of thousands of winning sales cycles.  Through the Dealmaker platform, we can aggregate anonymous data, to learn about the [evolving] cadence of sales cycle.  For each of our customers, Dealmaker allows them to track and measure the actual sales cycle of each deal, and analyze on a macro or micro level. For reasons of privacy and general good business practice, we don’t access individual customer’s data, but for certain accounts where we’ve been given explicit permission, we have been able to measure sales rhythm, and extrapolate to an […]

If you’ve ever experienced what appears to be extremely unfair behavior from your buyer or his (or her) procurement department, you will laugh out loud at the video below.

I got this link from my friend Joe Terry over at Corporate Visions whose organization helps companies create a compelling message to set themselves apart in the market. One thing that they do that I think really has value is that they know how to [help companies to] deliver the right marketing messages at the right place in the sales cycle.

This video shows some examples of [bad] corporate buyer behavior, but in […]

This is a guest post I did for Geoffrey James over at The Sales Machine. The original words were mine, but Geoffrey’s editing skills made it better.

SCENARIO: You’re feeling really good about the deal — the one you’re counting on to make your quota this quarter. Everything seems to be lined up. Your customer contact, Joe, has told you that you should get a verbal order within a few days, and paperwork soon after that.  Now, IMAGINE that you just missed a call from Joe, and you’re listening to the voice mail:

“Sorry, but we won’t be placing that order with you, […]

As you may know, The TAS Group, and others,  launched the Dealmaker Partner Network on Sept 29, 2009. Since then I’ve received many inquiries from individuals and companies who’ve expressed both intrigue and interest in what we’re doing. I hadn’t really thought that the DPN would create such interest, and as often happens when ideas evolve, I never called out the core thinking that combined to bring this idea to life.  Here it is in brief:

My perspective is informed by a number of macro trends that, in my opinion, are today combining to shape the future of the economy in general […]

It’s always good to listen to your customers.  Every six months or so The TAS Group hosts a Customer Advisory Board meeting where we bring together a small number of our customers to listen to what they have to say, understand the challenges they are facing, hear what they like, or don’t like, about the products and services we provide, and get their opinions on our planned innovations. It’s always educational and illuminating, and sometimes - like last week - it can be inspiring when we hear how our offerings are making a real difference to our customers’ sales organizations.

Last week […]