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Sales Management

No Single Strategy

I’ve recently gotten into answering posted questions on LinkedIn.  Its actually quite interesting to see some of the questions that people ask – many of them able to be answered with a simple Google search, but others are very thought provoking and I generally love to see a lot of insight from different points of view. 

The format on LinkedIn could be better in order to generate better banter back and forth – something more like Disqus comments – but nonetheless, I think generally its a good thing.

Sales of a FREE product mirrors challenges of marketing

I plan to write extensively about the challenges that I have had in developing and managing a sales compensation plan on a free enterprise product. 

As a matter of introduction, I was talking with one of the other managers of my company on Friday, and while we were talking we came to one giant realization about sales compensation/motivation on a free enterprise product.  That realization is that enterprise sales becomes similar to a marketing challenge.  In marketing, you never know ahead of time what the right places are to spend your money.  Yes, you do market research, and you think hard about where to advertise, where to promote, etc.  But, ultimately, many of the places you promote your product are not right, and some exceed expectations.

“Innovational” not a Generational Divide

It’s great to get back to some blogging.  I’ve got about 10 major points that I want to post here – but its been a very busy two weeks – and its not even the end of a quarter!

I’m currently sitting on a two year post as a trustee of Stevens Institute of Technology which is my alma mater, and just one amazing university.  The trustees had a two day meeting that co-incided with commencement at the university, and I had a lot of time to talk with my fellow trustees, and as I talked about my current position, and the challenges of selling FREE software, I was amazed at how quickly most of the people that I talked to just understood it.

Sales in the world of “free”

As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently running sales at Angelsoft, which provides deal-flow management software to early stage investment groups like angel groups, venture capitalists, incubators, business plan competitions, etc as well as software and services to the entrepreneurs with which they interface.    The sales team I’m managine is really bright and really enthusiastic, and I’ll be blogging about them a lot as I relate what’s going on at Angelsoft to other stories and ideas.

Salesforce.com drives me insane: Part 1

Salesforce.com is the WORST salesforce tool, except for all the others.

I have a lot of gripes with sales force tools, and I’ve yet to find one that is actually functional for all people in the organization.  I think that sf.com did one thing well.  They provided a tool that lets sales managers get a pipeline report and since its an online tool, the minute a sales person updates their information from anywhere in the world, that pipeline is up to date.  No syncing – no installs, etc.

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