This week I attended the TPMA (Toronto Product Management Association) monthly meeting: Are Your Sales Teams Truly Enabled to Sell Your Product? The speaker this month was Nicki Weiss, founder of sales effectiveness consulting company Saleswise. At the end of the meeting, Nicki left us with a challenge. Explaining that the most effective business relationships are actually triads, she challenged us to look at ways to include an additional person when we set up one-to-one business meetings.
True Innovators welcome competition
The concept was put forward simply. When what you are developing is so innovative that you are developing something not previously envisioned, having other players do something similar helps build credibility for your product. If you are the only one exposing a novel idea or product, then people may not listen. If there is more than one voice promoting new concepts, then the market may be more willing to embrace and adopt the new ideas.
Improve your customer’s experience by avoiding these easy mistakes
I had a huge problem this winter with the heating in my condominium apartment. It was made all the more unbearable because my engagement with the people who were responsible to fix it was way below par. I usually try to write a post that reflects positively on what to do – this prompted me to write a few basics on what you shouldn’t do.
Key Questions to ask your digital design/development house to see if they can really deliver
The new way of working is to use a lean process of continuous improvement, where you test what works or doesn’t work, modify and adapt based on the results. This can change the engagement that you have with the digital design/development house that you are working with to provide your web site and apps.
Tackle escalations head-on, with a calm attitude and the purposefulness of intention
Be transparent and direct when discussing risks and issues with executives. (It’s also important to be tactful, timely and aware of priorities so as not to be creating tempests in teapots.) Management can deal with problems when they know about them. Problems arise when they don’t know about issues and the potential impacts. Ask any Surgeon or ER doctor.
Do you have an OLA between your Marketing and Sales teams?
A written OLA can be used as an input into a requirements document of any Marketing Automation tool / Sales Automation tool interface project. All too often, these two departments use different tools that are more tailored to their specific functions. In order for information to pass easily between them an actual technical interface is typically required. If the operational process is understood and the necessary information to be passed between the teams is documented, then building this interface and setting up appropriate reporting tools can be done more effectively.
