Success Breeds Success

What hap­pened to the days when you sat down and reviewed ser­vice con­tracts for sales leads?

You know, find those accounts you sold that kept renew­ing their main­te­nance because the prod­uct works so well? Nice and easy, you call them up and sell a multi year renewal for a dis­count (they win/you win, the com­mis­sion check clears).

This would also open an oppor­tu­nity to show them how they could use that money for new prod­uct with an included year of main­te­nance… Man those were the days.

Now it’s a ser­vice review to find out what mar­kets and cus­tomers to avoid so you don’t call into a mar­ket where you are giv­ing your­self bad press and some sales jockey, who changes jobs every 8 months, is pol­lut­ing the landscape…

Good sales peo­ple Sales need to get back to sell­ing a prod­uct that meets needs– a good ser­vice review will do just that.

Part­ner­ship, a real part­ner­ship, suc­cess breeds success.

By the same token, cus­tomers have changed too. How about hon­estly review­ing a solu­tion that makes good busi­ness sense, vs. con­flict avoid­ance. “I can’t buy that, no one will use it, it’s new, let’s just wait until we are in cri­sis mode and fix it then”.

Software/Hardware, it doesn’t mat­ter any­more. If mar­kets, com­mer­cial, indus­trial, health­care, would focus on process improve­ment vs. incen­tives, buy­outs, and self-fulfilling career deci­sions, every­one would be happy. New tech­nol­ogy would get devel­oped with com­pe­tence, ven­dors would sell prod­uct, and exec­u­tives could spout their successes.

2 Responses to “ Success Breeds Success ”

1. Tuna says:

   July 29, 2009 at 4:59 pm

   I agree — cri­sis mode is every­where. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion (fear) rules and some­thing has to be fairly seri­ous to war­rant spend­ing right now.
2. Bill says:

   July 29, 2009 at 9:08 pm

   The real prob­lem is com­pa­nies are only focused on short term P&L type results. Com­bine that with risk adverse cul­tures where no one ever got fired for not mak­ing a deci­sion. And long term plan­ning and real busi­ness deci­sions go right out the window