Mr Lewis

Tag: sales

  • Manage sales activities, not just outcomes

    Manage sales activities, not just outcomes

    What do you think is going to happen if you think the way to manage your sales function,  is  simply double last year’s sales to create this year’s targets? Your sales will double? or Your sales staff will start looking for new jobs? I’d vote for B every time. As you can’t just double sales…

  • see the forrest and the trees

    My catch phrase this week has been “Think like a Marketer, Act like a Salesperson” A colleague went to raise $16M with a cunning plan. Two investors told him his plan was stupid, not cunning, and he pretty much threw his pitch in the bin. Another colleague deployed some new infrastructure, based on market research…

  • So, do you know a good Sales Manager?

    Over the last 9 years of running the Churchill Club I noticed that every time we have an event with a sales and marketing focus, someone asks me that question afterwards. They sidle up beside me and pretty much use these exact words every time “So, do you know any good sales managers?” The person…

  • sales, marketing, processes and lemmings

    A popular misconception about Lemmings is that every once and a while, they all suddenly run off a cliff and commit suicide. Unfortunately, its not a misconception when talking about sales & marketing processes in a professional services environment. As I’ve mentioned before, in any organisation, there is generally only 6 core Tactical Sales &…

  • Ignoring your emails

    Everyday I ignore your emails. Everyday I receive around 100 emails to my newsletter mailbox. I sign up for anything that takes my fancy, but mostly around technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, but occasionally around personal interests such as kayaking and food. At the end of the workday, I browse the newsletter mailbox fairly quickly, to…

  • wanna get lucky?

    So at a recent Churchill Club function in our Innovation thinking stream, we ran fascinating event Luck. As part of the panel, we brought up a chap called Jason Bresnehan from Tasmania to talk. Jason is a corporate advisor who last year decided to start writing articles about becoming luckier. Jason had started to wonder…

  • Dont go to networking events, if you want to build a great network

    The two weeks or so ago I took part in a panel session on Networking for CIOs. It was an interesting conversation although it pretty much centred around event attendance and using social networking tools like LinkedIn. At the end of the session, as I reflected on what  had come out of it, I was…

  • 6 tips for “un-networking”

    Imagine this scenario…. You go to a networking event, hovering at the edges of the crowd , desperately searching for someone you know, so you can chat and relax. Succumbing to the pressure to “network” you give up and introduce yourself to a nearby stranger, who is also standing by themselves. To your disappointment your…

  • Does Commission Only sales actually work?

    Quite regularly I get offered  commission only sales work.  Rarely though its ever phrased that way.  Normally its a discussion about how exciting and lucrative the opportunity is with a statement at the end like “we don’t pay retainers though”.  Instead there is a discussion around “spotters fees”, “trailing revenues”, “your margin” or being “looked…

  • What great questions have you got?

    My son, like many children, had his birthday around the cutoff date for entry into Primary school. So my wife and I had a choice “do we send him a little earlier, or a little late.  My position on the matter was “Give me one good reason we should hold him back”. And we couldn’t…