If you are in Dallas next Friday and would like to hear more about Sales Performance Management I will be speaking at a free luncheon and would love to see you there. The main topic will be how SPM can help strategically align your compensation plans, drive the right behaviors, and increase selling time. More details and RSVP information can be found here: SPM - Lunch. Network. Learn
This week I got down and dirty with 5 of the leading applications in the space. It had been a while since I had actually touched the products, so I went and logged into to a number of different environments and built some rules, built some hierarchies, created a workflow, made some manual adjustments and modeled some scenarios of potential new plan changes. There is something to be said for doing vs. seeing and the end results was pages and pages of notes and some new insights into the latest product functionality and ease of use. Good stuff.
I saw a quote this week from Donal Daly the CEO of The TAS group and founder of the Sales 2.0 Network, "The impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is always greater than the impact on a sales person of a lost deal." I agree 100% with Donal and I find that I really enjoy the role of customer advocate when helping with a vendor selection process. The corporate and personal risk to my clients of potentially purchasing the wrong technology solution to meet their problems is something that I take very seriously. As I see more and more companies and individuals market their Vendor Selection services in the Sales Performance Management space I hope that they share the same viewpoint and don't just view it as another project. Thinking about this here are three attributes to look for in a company that I would trust to help you match the right solution with your business needs and aspirations.
1. Experience - The consulting firm should have experience in running Vendor Selection projects, both from a time perspective and from a quantity perspective. If the consulting firm hasn't led 10-15 of these projects I would take that as a huge red flag. It takes time to develop the skill sets, knowledge and tools necessary to lead these projects. Something else to look for business and technical background. The consulting firm should have the institutional knowledge to address both IT and the businesses concerns when looking at new technology.
2. Methodology - At every step in the process the consulting firm should be able to bring to the table it's own methodology, best practices, templates and worksheets.
3. Knowledge - What pool of resources will the consulting firm pull their knowledge of the different technologies from? Hopefully it includes a majority of the following - relationships with the vendors, implementation expertise on the products, recent deep dive demonstrations of the potential technology, research analysts, and production customers.
That's it for this week, I hope everyone has a great weekend.
This week I got down and dirty with 5 of the leading applications in the space. It had been a while since I had actually touched the products, so I went and logged into to a number of different environments and built some rules, built some hierarchies, created a workflow, made some manual adjustments and modeled some scenarios of potential new plan changes. There is something to be said for doing vs. seeing and the end results was pages and pages of notes and some new insights into the latest product functionality and ease of use. Good stuff.
I saw a quote this week from Donal Daly the CEO of The TAS group and founder of the Sales 2.0 Network, "The impact on a customer of a bad buying decision is always greater than the impact on a sales person of a lost deal." I agree 100% with Donal and I find that I really enjoy the role of customer advocate when helping with a vendor selection process. The corporate and personal risk to my clients of potentially purchasing the wrong technology solution to meet their problems is something that I take very seriously. As I see more and more companies and individuals market their Vendor Selection services in the Sales Performance Management space I hope that they share the same viewpoint and don't just view it as another project. Thinking about this here are three attributes to look for in a company that I would trust to help you match the right solution with your business needs and aspirations.
1. Experience - The consulting firm should have experience in running Vendor Selection projects, both from a time perspective and from a quantity perspective. If the consulting firm hasn't led 10-15 of these projects I would take that as a huge red flag. It takes time to develop the skill sets, knowledge and tools necessary to lead these projects. Something else to look for business and technical background. The consulting firm should have the institutional knowledge to address both IT and the businesses concerns when looking at new technology.
2. Methodology - At every step in the process the consulting firm should be able to bring to the table it's own methodology, best practices, templates and worksheets.
3. Knowledge - What pool of resources will the consulting firm pull their knowledge of the different technologies from? Hopefully it includes a majority of the following - relationships with the vendors, implementation expertise on the products, recent deep dive demonstrations of the potential technology, research analysts, and production customers.
That's it for this week, I hope everyone has a great weekend.
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