Opportunity Portfolio Management (OPM) is the sales training course using the methods and ideas that are mostly (but not entirely) described in my first book, Sales Automation Done Right. Most of the analytical stuff from OPM is encapsulated in a range of mature SalesWays software products bearing the Sales Cycle Manager name.

Sales Automation Done Right has a chapter on new technologies that are having a huge impact on selling. The point that I tried to make here was that good sales methodology developed with technology in mind would fit all the diverse new technology tools that are springing up so quickly. Two important ones are mobile computing and subscription CRM. We’ll talk about mobile in a future entry, but right now, I’m pleased to say that Sales Cycle Manager is now available for Salesforce.com on their AppExchange platform.

On page 248 of SADR, I show the Sales Advisor Dashboard embedded in Salesforce.com. I must admit that we did this in 2003, before Salesforce.com had fully developed their AppExchange technology. We saw the potential here and literally hacked our stuff in. That experiment proved that the methodology fitted well within the Salesforce.com CRM framework.

But now AppExchange is here, and is a wonderful way for third party developers to make their material available to Salesforce.com users. The technology is solid, has the backing of Salesforce, and the marketing message to show what’s available—this should be a win-win situation for both Salesforce and their partner community.

I did an audio-visual presentation on the new AppExchange product, which you may be interested in seeing here.

Jeffrey Barrie was instrumental in getting me to finish writing “Sales Automation Done Right.” He has also spearheaded the effort of getting the book, our software, and the SalesWays web site translated into Russian, where he is leading a major initiative to promote SalesWays methodology in that country. His story is fascinating, and I’m posting a blog entry that he recently penned for the Palm Addicts web site that tells of how he and I originally connected over five years ago.

I am a consultant with dozens of potential clients at any given time, only a few of which get converted into paying customers. I am not a salesman, and need all the help I can get to “close” my opportunities. Several years ago, I surfed the Internet looking for Palm software that could help me manage my consulting opportunities. I searched PalmGear and Handango for hits on “CRM” and “sales automation,” came up with nine listings, and began downloading and testing them all out. The prices were all affordable, between $20 and $40, and they all seemed to have similar features.

One, in particular, caught my attention because it not only offered to actually become my personal sales assistant, guide me through the important stages of each deal, and give me advice on what to do and when to do it along the way – but to thoroughly educate me on the whys and wherefores. There was an entire system in place: a sales methodology specially adapted to personal computers (and PDAs!), a 300 page book explaining it in language I could relate my needs to, and Palm software (with a Windows client) to use at first as a learning aid, and then to manage my own sales opportunities.

I’m pretty aggressive, and tend to come on too strong to perspective clients. The book calmed me down by instructing me to set the average time it took, from the time I met a client to the time he or she made a decision, into the system as the “length of the sales cycle.” It then broke that down into three parts: 50% of the time to “probe” the perspective client for information on his or her needs, 40% to “prove” that my solution was the most appropriate, and 10% to “close” the deal. Then it told me to assign high, medium or low marks to three questions: “will it happen” (is the customer really serious), “will I get it” (will he or she do it with me) and “when will it happen” (what’s the client’s decision deadline). With just these four factors, the software was able to prioritize my opportunities, advise me how to handle them, and in what order. There were other bells and whistles, but these were the basics.

I was so intrigued by all of this that I began writing to Keith Thompson, the inventor of the methodology and author of the book, and eventually met with him in Toronto. At that time the book was only about three quarters finished and a “beta” down load from his website. I kept bugging him to get the book finished, and to publish it in Palm readable format so that I could carry it with me as an easy reference. He said he’d get the book finished, but if I wanted a Palm version I’d have to do it myself. I took him up on that, found Scribe in Philadelphia to do the digital conversion I was amazed at how much more useful the result was than a paper book, with extensive hotlinks to chapters, subjects and illustrations, and the ability to bookmark and make page notes while working in parallel with the Palm software. I chose MobiPocket to publish the eBook in universaly PDA/Blackberry/smart phone format, and the whole package was really complete.

Reference books in digital format, when extensive linkages are included, become amazingly more productive than books on paper. This is especially true for dictionaries and thesauruses. Now, when I read eBooks on my Palm and find an unfamiliar word, it’s a matter of a stylus tap to find its definition or more about it. I rarely went to the trouble of doing that in my paper book days.

The company is Salesways, the book is Sales Automation Done Right by Keith Thompson and the software is Sales Cycle Manager, available on both PalmGear and Handango. I’ve gotten so involved with all of this that I’ve had all of it translated into Russian!