Front Office Box - Latest Comments

Re: Why Social Media Is a Complete Waste of Time

Scott Warga — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:22:36 -0000

I found this blog on Twitter, a social media website. Nuff said

Re: How Social Media is Changing Everything As It Dies

phildunn — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:28:00 -0000

I wonder how aware the general public is about their "social graph" and how they're being pitched based on their connections and interests.

Seems like there will be a movement to "scrub" profiles and accounts (facebook, twitter, etc) in order to get cleaner results for advertising. The utility trade-off for the consumer (accurate recommendations) is pretty compelling.

"the information they need presented in ways they can understand" - hey that's my biz. Very important, as always, of course.

Re: Why Social Media Is a Complete Waste of Time

Questions1st — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:33:23 -0000

This blog post is obviously a part of social media that is a waste of time.

What value does it bring to anyone, except the author?

Re: Secret Health Food You Wont Believe

Coffee Clubs — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:18:00 -0000

I thought that coffee's benefit is to reduce the risk of prostate cancer. Thanks to this article and now I know other coffee's benefits.

Re: “Long Tail” software

kiruri — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:02:41 -0000

Small Business segment is good for the following reason also: due to their low budgets small businesses are not noted on the "big software" vendors' radars.
It is true not only for software - for example in advertising a sales rep from a "big" advertising agency will not bother to make a proposal to a bunch of small companies - their budgets are too small. Here is the domain where a 'lean' vendor can provide some cheap and valuable product or service.

Re: My Worst Sales Call – Ever!

Michel Chiasson — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:16:14 -0000

Steve,
So true. The dreaded "bringing the boss on a call" experience is a fear of most experienced sales reps. Had similar experience, also a long time ago, but adjusted to the "post contract signature meeting", which was somewhat less risky. Enjoying reading your blog as usual.

Re: Questions to Qualify the Sale

stevensreeves — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:40:33 -0000

Hi Michel thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment. I'm very familiar with the problem you describe. To my mind price is the one thing we should spend time training people to cope with, and from what I see, the coaches and authors never do.

I have written a couple of pieces on price here, but you've inspired to make a bigger project out of it. f you'd like to help me focus my pricing articles on some real life challenges please suggest some. Direction is always more useful than inspiration when it comes to writing stuff others might want to read :-)

In the software business price gets to be enormously complex, because there's no marginal cost so the answer gets to be whatever the customer will pay is acceptable. But of course the professional will always get a better price than the amateur, from the same customer and for the same deal.

I've always encouraged sales guys to talk money as early as possible in the sales process, if possible establishing at the first call what the cost expectations are, where the money's coming from, and what will justify the spend e.g ROI.

Re: Questions to Qualify the Sale

Michel Chiasson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:48:24 -0000

Yes...the questions....you are bang on again, but how often have I heard members of my sales team, after the 7 th time I asked why, figure out that they were "not sure" about the MONEY>>> that is such a key category. Everyone wants to solve everything, everyone can sign...until you follow the money! Such an important yet difficult question to ask for new sales reps.

Re: Why Sales Managers Fail

Michel Chiasson — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:12:19 -0000

Great post. Been there, lived it and on both sides. Promotion to sales manager and their managing managers. Becoming a manager because of past results also creates a profile that you know and that you seek...yours. You know what works and what you like and you look for it in the existing team. What organizations must be aware is that this is always a very costly transition. You lose your top producer, and the backfill will most likely be a more junior person. Out of curiosity, is there a follow on article that speaks to the right way to bring a manager and expectations to the job?

Re: Would You Use Free Business Software

bebobesq — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:50:02 -0000

I personally tend to favour SSuite Office’s free office suites. Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, like so many open source office suites, so it makes their applications very small and efficient.

http://www.ssuitesoft.com

Re: Setting the Direction for CRM

stevensreeves — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:49:09 -0000

I guess that's why everybody's using Salesnet then!

But that wasn't the point.

Anybody can say they do sales process management. The point of competition is how they do sales process management. My point in this post wasn't that FOB does sales process management - there's plenty of that elsewhere. The point was we started talking about sales process management and created some interest in what was then blue water. Somebody else spots our success and imitates us.

I've been in and around selling software, and getting it implemented for thirty years. I've been using software to manage sales and sales process for most of that time, which is how I know the vast majority of CRM stuff out there is garbage, for our market at least - almost as much garbage as all this bullshit we're getting about Social CRM.

If you don't like what I write don't read it and please keep your advertising to your own pages.

Re: Setting the Direction for CRM

wecandobiz — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:25:48 -0000

Steve, it's worth you taking a look at Salesnet. They've had Sales Process Management and traffic light coded deals which turn red if a deal step slips overdue for about 8 years.

There is few ways to innovate in the CRM space, but it's surprising what people have in their solutions that they don't do a great job of advertising.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Re: My Top Ten Business Tools

patricia1 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:16:04 -0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Patricia

http://dataentryjob-s.com

Re: Internet Marketing for Beginners

Tax Foreclosures — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:15:28 -0000

Good marketing program including internet indexing will go a long way.

Re: Internet Marketing for Beginners

Tax Foreclosures — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:30:13 -0000

Making money from a blog is directly proportional to the traffic and quality of the visitors. Though the suggested tips are good but I would like to add that organizing online contest for the guest visitors is also a good way to keep them tuned with the blog.

Re: Pre Announcing the new Front Office Box Social CRM | frontofficebox

lopas — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:14:58 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Multi Dimensional Business Management

vipul123 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:11:34 -0000

Multidimensional business management is very important for all kinds of firms these days as data is being looked from various point of views and hence it has to be managed from all those point of views also.

Re: How Accurate Is Your Sales Forecast

southardjones — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:19:56 -0000

Happy to get the conversation going. If you get a chance check out the Right90 blog on sales forecasting (blog.right90.com) which has a wide variety of topics.

-Southard

Re: How Accurate Is Your Sales Forecast

stevensreeves — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:15:14 -0000

Thanks for stopping by and taking the trouble to comment.

Of course you're right and to be honest I wasn't thinking of inventory management when I wrote the post, just revenue as you've pointed out.

Anybody who's selling from inventory rather than make to order will need a different mechanism for inventory planning.

Re: How Accurate Is Your Sales Forecast

southardjones — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:08:11 -0000

This a good article on weighted forecast (weighted pipeline.) However, there is more to forecasting, than just calling the top line revenue number. Many companies rely on the sales forecast to help them determine how many units of each sku they are going to build. For these companies, the weighted forecast method has many flaws. Example: A customer is forecasted to buy a specific product at 55% probability. In this case the customer doesn't buy '55% of 1000 units demanded' - they either buy 1000 units or 0 units. If the company builds 550 units of that sku for that customer, they are worse off. If they win the business, they can’t meet the fulfillment needs. If they lose the business, they have 550 units of excess inventory. While weighted forecast is useful tool for calling top line revenue, it’s only a component of a complete forecast.

Re: Sales Management in the Front Office

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Re: Free Business Plan Template and Checklist

The Baldchemist — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:35:56 -0000

Don't forget budget and return on investment. Without these there is no business plan.

Re: Cut Costs in Selling and Sourcing With Webrequest

Steven Reeves — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:32:42 -0000

Really interesting description of how to use the tool to harvest low hanging fruit.

I'm going to post about this on our site.

Re: Selling Business Services in a Recession

avantrasara — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:04:55 -0000

Interesting perspective which I can back up with my own experience.

I'm still getting paid on a value sharing deal I did five years ago.

The client isn't over happy, but would do a similar deal in a heart beat if the opportunity came along.