A Sales VP is on the sharp end of the stick. There’s nowhere to hide. They often take the fall for all the shortcomings in the performance of a business including poor product (quality, value proposition, etc), incorrect pricing, bad marketing (lack of awareness, unqualified leads, etc) and rotten customer service. Many a Sales VP fails and is shown the door through no fault of their own. The good ones become increasingly (and annoyingly) direct about the problems in the rest of the business prior to their departure. Before you make your current sales leader walk the plank, you really should listen with an open mind. It’s Not You, It’s Your Sales VP But sometimes the problem actually does li

Jim Collins introduced the concept of “the Genius of the AND” to millions of managers in his book Built to Last – Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. In so doing he inspired visionary leaders but also created a bolt-hole for vacillating senior executives everywhere. In the book, James Collins and Scott Porras explore business approaches and strategies undertaken by eighteen “highly visionary companies”. The authors ask what makes truly exceptional companies different and what common practices are followed throughout their history. Among other things, they identified one tactic that interferes with companies (and individuals) achieving greatness: adopting a “black and white,” “either/or

Pricing – it isn’t glamorous but it certainly has a long-term impact on sales effectiveness and profitability. It’s actually one of the most important things a marketer does. Here’s a primer on what to think about when tackling those tough pricing decisions: Start off with a clear pricing strategy: what is the basis for the price level and model? Make sure it’s supported by a strong business case for using the product so it’s easily justifiable to a customer. And benchmark against equivalent pricing for both competitors and substitutes. Should you consider a “loss leader” or “freemium” pricing model to encourage experimentation and early adoption? What’s the upgrade price? Is the produc

Before there were websites, even before there was an Internet, the place where “conversion” occurred was on the pages of a well prepared proposal. Even today for many B2B companies, the customer proposal is the final and most important step in converting customer interest into a contract. So what makes a winning proposal? Like a well designed website, a winning proposal takes a target audience on a buyer’s journey, hopefully resulting in a purchase. It requires an understanding of the audience’s pain points and their buying process. An effective overall structure for an unsolicited or directed proposal (as opposed to an RFQ response with a pre-determined format) often includes the following

Canadian engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs prove time and again that Canada doesn’t have an innovation problem. Unfortunately, we do have trouble achieving scale. That’s one of the reasons Canadian start-ups are snapped up by US firms often before they’ve hit the $100M revenue mark (sometimes much earlier). As Micheal Kelly, Dean of Laurier University’s School of Business and Economics observed in a recent CATA speech, Canadian innovation policy has been designed to create vibrant tech startup clusters which then simply become “a farm team for Silicon Valley”. Venture capitalists and incubators will argue that the buyout of Canadian start-ups creates experienced and well-funded entrep

Every day you receive feedback. Sometimes it gets saved up for a month, a quarter or a year and is delivered in the form of a performance review. Other time it arrives in a 360 degree report commissioned as part of a management development program. Whatever way it comes, it can be useful in helping you improve as an employee and a manager. How much value you get from receiving feedback is entirely up to you. When receiving feedback people go through three stages – sometimes in the moment and sometimes over an extended period of time: React Reflect Respond Being aware of these stages, and intentional about your behaviour, will help you get the most from the feedback you receive. React We ofte