Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.

Sales 2.0 has been lauded as giving the customer control of the sales process since they can now research their options and make purchase decisions long before ever speaking to a salesperson—IF they ever speak to a salesperson.

Much has been written about how this new buyer controlled process will destroy the sales industry since more and more purchasing decisions will be made without ever consulting a salesperson; how buyers will continue to demand access to more and more free, objective information; and how all of this information will make the purchasing process quicker, easier, and more efficient for buyers.

I suspect that all of the predictions will prove to be absolutely, totally, unquestioningly incorrect.

I’m willing to bet that there will be a huge increase in the number of professional, highly specialized sellers as a result of the avalanche of information made available to buyers..

I’m also willing to bet that the sheer amount of information available at one’s fingertips will increase the complexity of the purchasing process for most goods—even relatively simple purchases.

Just two very quick examples:

My wife and I are in the process of a major home improvement project. We have ripped up perfectly good carpet from two rooms and perfectly good ceramic tile from three other rooms in order to put down a stone floor so we can cover it with more carpet in the form of rugs (what humans do sometimes makes no sense from a logical standpoint). In years past the selection of rugs for the foyer, den, dining room and kitchen would have been easy—we have a few stores in town that sell rugs and we’d make a selection from their inventory. In reality we’d select from maybe a few hundred rugs with a couple dozen being actual contenders.

More of the Sales and Management blog post from Paul McCord

My wife feels like I’ve shacked up with another woman–I’m that in love with Siri. But my wife isn’t too upset, because Apple’s iOS personal digital assistant has given me more time to spend with my family. I’ve been able to get work done during times when I normally could not. And that’s the part that tickles my CIO spider sense, which tells me: Feldman, this is going to change the way that IT delivers service.
I had upgraded to an iPhone 4S mainly because my 3G had run out of steam. I wasn’t too excited by the prospect of Siri. Many of us have used Dragon Dictation and voice dialing. So what, right?

That’s like saying AltaVista was all the Web ever needed with search. That’s how big I think Siri is–Google search big.

Siri, unlike segmented voice recognition, integrates lots of services. In other words, instead of having to mess around with buttons to take a note with Dragon Dictate, and then copy it, then paste it into my notebook, I can just say: “Siri, write a note.” Response: “OK, boss, what do you want it to say?” Then it pops it into my notebook. Done.

More of the InformationWeek article by Jonathan Feldman

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings must be feeling a little bit like a team that ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated and then started losing games. Last year, Hastings was on the cover of Fortune as its Business Person of the Year. This year, he’s getting slammed for what he acknowledges are a series of poor decisions and mishandled customer communications. It’s kind of like the dreaded SI cover jinx.

After raising the price for the Netflix DVD and movie streaming package over the summer, Hastings publicly apologized but didn’t change the terms of the deal. Then a few months later, he announced that Netflix was going to be just for streaming movies and a spin off company, Qwikster, would handle DVD rentals. Customers would no longer have a master movie queue online at one site. They’d have to go back and forth between the sites if they wanted both streaming movies and DVD rentals. Customers hated that idea and Netflix killed Qwikster a few weeks later. A lot of customers decided to just bail out. Netflix announced a few days ago that they lost 800,000 customers in the last quarter. The company’s stock has declined by around 35% in each of the past two days.

More of the Next Level blog post from Scott Eblin

CIO — In most product-driven firms, product planning is one of the highest leverage processes in the whole company. There’s a huge difference in the profitability of a “hit” vs. a me-too product, and a dud is worse than just unprofitable. By its nature, product strategy is as much art as science, but bringing more hard data into the process improves the quality of prioritization decisions.

Product strategy needs to be a mix of engineering/operations plan and market survey, but most market survey techniques are quite vulnerable to big procedural and statistical problems. The iconic bad product of the 1950s was the Edsel, yet it was the result of the most thorough surveying processes of its era.

Fortunately, CRM systems naturally contain information about products, customers, and features. Further, modern CRM systems store a sequence of interactions that make the data support richer inferences about “what’s important to customers.”

The most essential data for product planning is transactional: what products sell where, at what discount level, to whom. While the core of this data may be available from your accounting or order-entry system, the CRM system adds color to the transaction, such as the vertical market, the names and titles of the (likely) users, and the length / complexity of the sales cycle. From this data, you can understand which products tend to be bought together, what are the messages, campaigns or offers that tend to stimulate sales, and which competitive situations are the most favorable. From this, you can infer which feature improvements can help you win more often.

More of the CIO Magazine article from David Taber

This morning, I’m kicking off an engagement with Harry Howe of Howe Leadership. Harry is helping me tidy up the processes of my business life so I can do a better job serving my clients and Lifeline Data Centers, the company that I represent.

My sales team and I market via a website, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, local networking and in-house telemarketing to generate leads.

We meet with clients to talk about requirements, conduct tours, and sometimes respond to RFPs to convert bona fide opportunities into monthly recurring revenue streams.

We publish newsletters, co-host seminars, and meet periodically to provide ongoing value to our clients.

I have enough irons in the fire that it’s become difficult for me to keep all my work organized. It also has become more difficult to step back and evaluate my processes without a little outside help. So Harry is helping me. I’ll write more about the process as it unfolds.

This summer I attended a Winning Minds seminar with Matt De La Cruz. The subject of the seminar was goal setting. Matt said he uses Black Friday as his day to do most of his 2011 planning. I have decided to use Black Friday as a goal setting day as well.

Matt’s goal setting methodology uses separate sheets of paper for each goal, with very specific metrics and milestones for each one. This is coupled with a weekly and sometimes daily review of progress. How specific are your goals? Mine were pretty non-specific before I took the Winning Minds seminar. How specific are your goals?

The tagline of this blog is practical overachievement. An overachiever is generally defined someone who performs better than their peers when compared for background, intelligence or talent. The practical side of overachievement is, in my opinion, work effort, or a relentless pursuit of well-defined goals. It doesn’t matter if the goal is business development, IT strategy, bowling, or overcoming fear. Here is a great article on managing overachievers.

Overachievers have the drive, determination, passion, and energy needed to move huge projects forward. But they’re not like other employees. You need to lead them differently if you want to take advantage of all they have to offer. You also need to watch out for characteristic quirks that can undermine their success: They sometimes set unrealistic expectations, work insane hours, and take risks to succeed at any cost. Without some savvy supervision, many can lose perspective and become obsessed, dysfunctional, and ultimately unable to perform.

In order to manage overachievers well, you need to understand their personality type and build a relationship on trust, so they know you have their best interest in mind. Here we’ll show you how to curb the destructive tendencies that can disrupt a star performer’s productivity and develop positive management skills to keep them — and you — happy.

* None. You can’t put a price on a well-managed relationship.
* Keeping a super-achiever on track demands constant communication. Schedule an hour or two per week for pep talks, dealing with obstacles, and discussing personal goals.
* Interpersonal Skills: You’ll need fundamental skills like listening, observing, and communicating to understand overachievers and the objectives they value most.
* Mentoring Program: Develop a mentoring program such as IBM’s (see “The Nitty Gritty,” below) to guide overachievers — and to let them provide insight and information to other employees.
* Patience: Overachievers demand a lot from their managers, but if you give them the time and attention they need, they can accomplish twice as much as other employees.

Identify the Overachiever
Goal: Recognize overachievers on your team and during job interviews.

more of the BNET article from Laurie Sullivan