Seffers Shine

A winner of a guy I know, hailing originally from PE in South Africa has a happy sales history and, having started one new business of his own, yearns to do it again within the next three years. His current role sees him managing resellers for his London-based software products in S Africa. Doing business myself in that territory with an office in Cape Town, we discussed how un-sales savvy the Jaapies are. Yet Stuart (Pearce) excitedly told me about one of his resellers (technology firm Sybase) that had particularly impressed him.Stewie was running through a potential deal with their MD, when questions arose about it. The MD called in the rep dealing with it, and asked him to talk them through it. The rep rocks up with a single piece of paper, with a few boxes on it.

“…well, the players are [so and so] and [x] the decision maker. Their drivers are [y,z, etc] and the reason why they’ll go ahead is [a & b]. Our issues to look for are [c, d, e] ….” And on he went. Amazingly, the guy could talk about everything from one single Deal Sheet, satisfactorily answering each query.

There’s loads of funnel and account management training that spout this approach, but how often do you actually come across someone not only using it, but doing so in such a successful (apparently) manner?

In addition, why can’t any crm produce this kind of stuff?  They probably say they can, as they all claim to be easily customisable, but in reality, this never happens, does it….