Business is good, but you could still use a few more leads. Who couldn’t? Starting today, put your website to work generating solid leads that convert to solid sales. The first step is to get those strong prospects to visit your website. There are a number of ways to do this. Join the forums and [...]

Last week, one of my clients—we’ll call him Rick—had a demo scheduled with a prospect. The standard "show up and throw up" they typically did early in the sales cycle. Trying to shorten the sales cycle, I asked naively, "Why does the customer want to buy? What are they trying to accomplish?" Rick couldn’t tell [...]

Once you get your streamlined sales force up to speed, it’s going to need more people to talk to. You already have a lead generation program in place. But is it working? Is it sufficient? Probably not, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading an article called "turnaround tactics." So you have to stoke the lead machine.

Different positions within a sales force require different functions from an SFA system, and tailoring to fit those functions is a big part of successful SFA strategies. Corporate professionals can learn a lesson from George S. Patton, the flamboyant WWII general. "I don’t expect my men to understand anything more than what’s right in front [...]