Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Are you a hammer or a nail?
If someone gave you a hammer to dig a hole, and you didn’t know any better, you’d probably come to the conclusion that the hammer wasn’t a great tool. Of course, you’d be wrong because it’s the perfect tool for driving nails…it just wasn’t designed for digging holes.
This scenario seems be one of biggest challenges in many large enterprises. We take a perfectly good tool, and try to use it in ways for which it was not designed. In the process we undermine people’s perception of the tool’s value, though no fault of the tool, not to mention our own credibility.
We also treat people like hammers and then wonder why we get suboptimal results...
| | View blog reactionsThis scenario seems be one of biggest challenges in many large enterprises. We take a perfectly good tool, and try to use it in ways for which it was not designed. In the process we undermine people’s perception of the tool’s value, though no fault of the tool, not to mention our own credibility.
We also treat people like hammers and then wonder why we get suboptimal results...
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Does salesforce.com have anything to do with selling?
I have always been fascinated with salesforce.com but even more fascinated with the users of it. I have noticed an interesting trend amongst my professional friends who are sales people. The ones who suck at using salesforce.com actually are good sales people. The opposite is also true in that the ones that are great with salesforce.com kinda suck at selling.
I attribute my observation to the fact that people who keep systems such as salesforce.com up to date do so because they really don't like talking to people. It is so much easier to check emails and perform other low-value clerical tasks than it is to sell. Sadly, many sales managers feed this reality. I hope I am not alone in believing the only way to make money is to talk to people.
| | View blog reactionsI attribute my observation to the fact that people who keep systems such as salesforce.com up to date do so because they really don't like talking to people. It is so much easier to check emails and perform other low-value clerical tasks than it is to sell. Sadly, many sales managers feed this reality. I hope I am not alone in believing the only way to make money is to talk to people.
