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Companies with a complex sales process are constantly looking for ways to simplify and reduce risk associated with any complex endeavor.
Perhaps we can find insight from other "operations" -- surgical teams, and medical services delivery, for example. This site will aggregate insights for dealing with complexity as a general topic, and sales and marketing complexities in particular.
A great starting point is with the work of Dr. Atul Gwande of Boston's Brigham and Women's hospital. His ideas were first shared in a New Yorker article, and since then in numerous interviews as a result of his book, The Checklist Manifesto.
Malcolm Gladwell's review of the book gives us a good start:
"Gawande begins by making a distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don´t know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we made because we don´t make proper use of what we know). Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it´s just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality.
Gawande then visits with pilots and the people who build skyscrapers and comes back with a solution. Experts need checklists–literally–written guides that walk them through the key steps in any complex procedure. In the last section of the book, Gawande shows how his research team has taken this idea, developed a safe surgery checklist, and applied it around the world, with staggering success."
How do you get surgeons and doctors - or salespeople - to adopt and regularly use such a seemingly simple remedy to errors that occur in a complex situation? This is another area where Dr. Gwande's writing can help us as we prepare to deploy recommendations to sales professionals who "have been selling successfully for years" (decades).
Checklist Implications for Marketing and Sales
Consider checklists that are related to sales, and how well they support your efforts:
- Sales game plans: annual, quarter, week, day
- Sales process: requirements to be in a stage; activities related to a stage; requirements to move to next stage;
- Pre-call preparation lists
- Customer conversation
- Needs analysis
- Opportunity review
- Major account plans
- Objection handling
- Prospect nurturing plan and activities
- Solution configuration
- Implementation
Marketing activities related to checklists:
- Annual marketing calendar
- Campaign / events
- Nurturing process
- Content creation process
Please submit your list additions and ideas to info@avitage.com with the word Checklist in the title.
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