What does “sales” mean to you? There are plenty of meanings to choose from.

Inspired by Jeff Foxworthy’s famous “You Might Be a Redneck” bits from the 1990s, here are a few about the sales process that might inspire some changes in your world

There is a difference between a scoreboard and a dashboard. Unless it’s baseball, keep them separate!

Metrics are imperfect by nature. So, please, pick measures wisely!

The idea of changing people’s behavior is daunting and proves futile to most. More oversight, metrics, meetings, emails, and reports don’t seem to inspire healthier behavior. Work on structural alignment with a clear and transparent outcome hierarchy.

Empathy can be a great substitute for expensive and time-consuming market research

If your college roommate calls selling your business a new software system, do you buy? Know, like, and trust…. absolutely. But without utility, it just won’t matter.

Catchy C + C Music Factory songs aside, studies reveal several shocking business realities that should make you go hmmm. Don’t be a statistic.

A process is a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end. It’s not more complicated than that. But there are things to keep in mind along the way.

OK…fair enough. The Commercial Ratio (CR) provides a high-level view to the impacts of marketing and sales spend. However, the CR is incomplete and unnecessary. The link to a podcast where the merits are debated is in the blog post.

If you’ve generated a sale, the good news is you already have a sales process - technically speaking. However, the process is most likely unwritten, unrepeatable, unmanageable, and quite FRUSTRATING! Create a winning sales process by first considering the desired outcomes, define the important milestones of the deal, then support the process and people with technology.

Gotcha with that clickbait title! Metrics are important but they aren’t overly important. Several outcomes are more important than hitting metrics. Consider the Outcome Hierarchy.

Inbound marketing is like sitting at the bar putting out your mojo while waiting for an attractive person to start a conversation with you. Outbound marketing is like approaching an attractive person and starting a conversation.

Round Canoe Syndrome is a metaphor for what happens in a misaligned organization. Left untreated, it’s deadly.