Fifteen years ago we were working with a client in the industrial automation industry. They were struggling with sales- albeit during the mid-90’s and a robust economy. Our client’s executive sales team told us they had one major problem with their sales team: they didn’t know how to close a deal. We identified their problem: Their hiring criteria were based entirely on hiring people with technical knowledge and industry sales experience. Since the entire industry focused on hiring engineers, industry sales experience was achieved by hiring someone that did a good job interviewing or was “liked” by the interviewee (whatever criteria the interviewee uses to “like” someone). No vetting on sales skills in the interview process. Consequently, while the automation industry as a whole had a lot of salespeople with good technical knowledge that could expound ad nauseam on their product’s technical capabilities, it suffered a severe shortage of closers.  Read more

FADAL stood for Francis Adrian Dave And Larry. Francis de Caussin started a machine shop back in the 60’s. He brought in his three sons- Adrian, Dave, And Larry- to help. In the late 70’s, they grew tired of watching the Japanese take over the U.S. auto, television, electronics, and machine tool markets. They decided to do something about it. They designed and manufactured an entirely U.S.- sourced vertical machining center, and launched the product in 1981 during the worst machine tool recession to hit the U.S. To give you an idea of how bad that recession was, the U.S. machine-tool market 1981 sales were 45% of their 1980 numbers. Machine tool companies that were sending customers to Hawaii in 1980 were closing their doors by 1982.  Read more

A senior executive of a company told me that they would have to outsource some functional elements of their organization overseas. He said their company was under substantial pressure from stockholders to perform better and one of the solutions was to outsource a major functional element of their business to an off-shore organization that could do it at less than half the cost. If someone offers to do something at less than half the price of what it currently costs you and assures the quality will not suffer, then you are compelled to do it- or your competitor will. Read more

The Laws of Sales: Read more