OPM in Salesforce.com

Posted in News by Keith Thompson on the July 10th, 2006

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.

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Sales in The Fifties

Posted in Sales by Keith Thompson on the February 20th, 2006

For the previous entry, I had to dig around in some dusty areas of my sales library. The oldest sales book was part of a series of twenty volumes called “Modern Business” dating from 1958. I bought them for $5 from our next door neighbor’s garage sale. His wife had made him toss them out, and my wife was mad at me for buying them (they require three feet of shelf space). Although I consider 1958 as almost yesterday, these books are nearly fifty years old. Most of the people I work with in SalesWays were not yet born then.

In 1958, I was living in the UK. Buddy Holly had recorded “That’ll Be The Day” in 1957. The Beatles were listening and they would do their own great thing five years later. I was not thinking at all about sales. But somebody was, because the volume called “Salesmanship” has a lot of good stuff in it. When I wrote Sales Automation Done Right, I had not read these books—they had been gathering dust, waiting for my wife’s next garage sale. There are some gems here, and now, there is no way that I will ever let them go.

Here are just a few of the ideas that will be just as appropriate in 2008, sixty years on from when they were written:

1958: “When one accepts the idea that selling is a process, he has started on the right path.”
1958: “While selling seems to be primarily an art, it still has certain aspects of a science. . . as a science, it requires the mastery of certain fundamentals which have evolved from success by others.”
1958: “In selling your product, a prospect needs conviction if you would close him.”
1958: “Analyzing a sales opportunity. If a sales opportunity arises, it is important that you carefully study it before reaching a conclusion as to whether you should make an effort to take an advantage of it.”
1958: “Value of planning. In the process of selling, planning plays a major role . . .”

Of course, the most influential factor in the progress of sales is not mentioned in “Salesmanship.” It would be another 35 years before personal computers would develop as the technology tool of choice for salespeople everywhere.

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