Sales, at greater length
LinkedIn holds the opening. Here is the rest: the situation, the decision, and what I took away from it.
Sales Transformation
Good people don't leave a transformation. They leave a bad one.
That the good people leave first in a transformation is only half true. Often it is the other way round, and the transformation is needed because they have already gone. Why those who stayed are not the leftovers, and how a single conversation in my first leadership role made everything that followed possible.
Sales Transformation
Pay for the old and you get the old.
The target state is in place, everyone nods, and sales still works the way it always has. As long as the target system pays for the old behaviour, the transformation remains reversible. When to touch the target system, why it is decided by the classic conflict between new business and existing customers, and how to manage the transition without the team experiencing it as an attack on their income.
Sales Transformation
A target state is not a vision.
When I take over a sales organisation, I usually have the target state in my head already. I still only put the worked-out version on the table once the analysis is done and the first change has had an effect. What belongs in a target state for me, why it is a sensitive subject in sales and why it is allowed to change.
Sales Transformation
The first change has to fill the pipeline.
As a salesperson I had the same question in mind with every change, namely what it would do to my pipeline. Today I put exactly that question to every measure before I rebuild a sales organisation. Why the first move has to bring in revenue, how to find it in the numbers from the analysis, and why the fourth quarter stays clear.
Sales Transformation
A change is only as good as its foundation.
Almost every sales transformation starts with a new CRM, new processes and new metrics. That can be planned, worked through and shown to the steering committee. Only whether the right measure was chosen at all is decided long before. On the first thirty days, and on why the conversations in them show more than any report.
IT & OT Security
None of the security tools was wrong. All of them together were.
Companies buy security as a series of individual decisions and run it as one system. In between lies the reason why security so often slows daily work more than it protects it, why customers ask for products they already own, and why the most honest sales meeting is the one where you sell nothing.
IT & OT Security
Seven-year-old technology is worthless, says Palo Alto. On a factory floor, seven years is not old.
The CEO of Palo Alto Networks says security infrastructure older than seven years is worthless against AI-driven attacks. For a data centre that may hold. In manufacturing a legacy system is not a failure, it is the normal state. And the real obstacle there is not technical.
AI in Sales
Five AI applications that actually pay off in sales
AI in sales is usually discussed exactly where it achieves the least. Five applications along the path an enquiry takes through a sales organisation. What they deliver, what they require, and the pattern that connects them.
Sales Transformation
The customer has decided before you call
Fifty-seven per cent of the buying process is behind the customer before the first sales contact happens. What that means for the first conversation, and why most conversations start in the wrong place.
Leadership
Guardrails instead of rules
The average salesperson follows the process. The good one reads the situation. Why room to decide is not a reward in sales but a precondition.
AI in Sales
AI takes over the preparation, not the conversation
The debate is usually about whether AI replaces salespeople. The more interesting question is which part of the work it takes over, and what that finally frees up time for.
IT & OT Security
OT security does not sell like IT security
A segment with no pipeline, no reference and no playbook. What building the OT business taught me about why proven security arguments fail on the shop floor.
Leadership
My biggest rookie mistake as a manager was acting for the sake of acting
I had a good plan. Only nobody knew it but me. How one evening with the numbers on the table and a pizza order turned a group of colleagues into a team.
Direct Sales & Channel
A deal is not won just because everyone wants it
Five-year term, full discount, an annual right to withdraw. A deal where the customer, the salesperson and the company were each right and still did not come together.
Sales Transformation
Transformation is not for the faint-hearted
Everyone nods when the strategy is on the wall. The hard part comes afterwards, and it hits the most loyal people hardest.
AI in Sales
AI in sales: Land of Confusion
Out of 33 pilots started, four reach production. Why that is rarely down to the technology, and what actually works in sales.