Phil Lauterjung

Posts Tagged ‘customers’

As the recession wears on more and more companies are trying to find sales nirvana.  The number of articles, postings, tips, tricks, and short cuts are increasing every day.  But, once again, reality bites.  Point-of-the-post alert!! – There are no short cuts, only hard work!!

A report released a few months ago by Dow Jones and CSO Insights on Sales Performance Optimization noted that the number of companies using a formal or dynamic sales process decreased this year.  The reason they concluded that happened was that it required hard work.  An astounding 63% of the companies surveyed only had a random or informal sales process in place.  I hope I don’t need to tell anyone that those companies had worse sales results than the 37% with a formal or dynamic sales process.  Read more... (483 words, 3 images, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Flckr - Serene Silence

Pardon the interruption, but I need to vent.  Don’t worry, I promise not to do this very often; and, this definitely has application for all of our businesses.  It relates back to a recent post – Should Customer Service be a Given? – and is from a personal experience this past weekend.

It started with a call my wife took from Citibank regarding a “problem” with a credit card account.  She couldn’t figure out what the lady was talking about so she did the next best thing and handed the phone off to me.  I’m not really sure why she did, since she has seen me in action on these types of calls before – not always a pretty sight.  Read more... (531 words, 2 images, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

YIKES!  It’s the end of June!  The Year is half gone!!

This is a time of year when most sales managers and their sales people come to the realization that their is half over.  They start to evaluate where they are with “the numbers”, and dread begins to set in if it doesn’t look good.  And that’s in a good year.  Most haven’t had to face an economy like we are dealing with today…ever!  In their entire life!  Read more... (544 words, 2 images, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Image: stockvault.net

Remember when you were a child and you learned to trust your Dad to throw you into the air…and then catch you?  You just knew that he would catch you – even though you were scared.  Or, maybe you have small children of your own now, and you play the same game with them.  But, at first the trust isn’t quite there is it?  The trust has to be earned, right?  Read more... (464 words, 2 images, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Think about who has the most control over the buyer/seller relationship.

If you’re old enough, think about that relationship before we had internet browsers, cell phones (remember when pagers were high-tech?), email, or any of the other tools we now take for granted.  Back then, where did buyers have to go to get information on products and services?  Most often, it was only available from the suppliers via their friendly sales rep.

Fast-forward to the 21st century (OK, maybe the end of the 20th century) – where do buyers typically go to get product and service information?  By now you know where I’m going with this – right?  Read more... (285 words, 2 images, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)