Managed Services

Are You Your Own Worst Enemy? Change!

How is it that some people embrace change so willingly and use it to launch and maintain success while others seem to run from it and refuse to implement it? I’m always amazed how long someone will tread the same path over and over without the slightest consideration that the
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Creating Sustainable Opportunity

Each month I receive calls, questions, and inquiries asking about best practices surrounding sales forecasting and driving a sales funnel that is real. It seems there is a significant challenge in trying to produce an accurate sales forecast. Our sales operation reviews find that
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A Sales Process that Delivers 70% Forecast Accuracy

Our sales engagements begin with the discovery and identification of one’s key business objectives and ends seven steps later at the Manage and Adjust process. In the sales team training exercises, we find that few sales reps can truly articulate the unique value of their company
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Tell Them Your Value

The term “a ship without a rudder” fits the profile of many sales organizations today. I often find that company leaders have failed to deliver proper tools, thoughts, and processes to guide their sales team to success. Specifically, I’m referring to a company’s value
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The 14 Million Dollar Minute

A decade ago the United Postal Service officially introduced their no left hand turns policy. UPS learned through time studies that avoiding left hand turns saves time, conserves fuel, lowers emissions and increases safety. UPS managers combined personal and historical experience
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Execute, Measure, Manage and Adjust

Building A Successful Managed Services Business (Part 6 of a 6 Part Series) This article describes how to design an execution plan to successfully transform your company and sales organization to include strategic services such as managed print and/or managed IT deliverables. I
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Training: The Master Key in Transforming Your Business Building A Successful Managed Services Business Part 5

Training: The Master Key in Transforming Your Business This series is about transforming a business toward a managed services business model. I will continue with the cadence offered in my previous articles, which build up to this point. As previously stated, the sales team model
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Designing a Winning Sales Team Model Building A Successful Managed Services Business Part 4

Throughout this series, I have continually emphasized that each phase of development for your company’s future must be rooted and aligned to your key business objectives and market strategy. This is absolutely true for designing a proper sales team model. Sales organizations of
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Marketing: Missing In Action Building A Successful Managed Services Business Part 3

Defining key business objectives to establish your company’s primary direction and creating a market strategy that outlines your value to the marketplace are foundational components for energizing any marketing plan. In this article, I’ll discuss my observations from reviewing
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Is Your Go-To-Market Strategy the Best It Can Be? Building A Successful Managed Services Business Part 2

This series of articles is about building a successful managed services business; and this particular article shares my observations and discoveries when engaging dealers who want to include managed service deliverables in their go-to-market strategy. Just saying that you’re a
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Service Tech Leads Generation 2.0

Shortly after the December 2013 ENX issue was distributed, I had several service professionals, dealership owners and even one sales manager stop at the ENX booth at a tradeshow to talk with me about my December ENX article, Service Tech Sales Sleuths. To summarize the article
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Building A Successful Managed Services Business Part 1 of a 6 Part Series / Defining Key Business Objectives

Dealers today seek any advantage over their competition, and sales reps scream for a real differentiation that would allow them the advantage over competitors – and yet few have any sort of marketing plan in effect to aid their desire. In the last seven years, I’ve worked with
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Building A Successful Managed Services Business – The Miracle is in the Execution

“MPS is dead! The market is saturated!” I hear these words all too often these days, mostly from organizations whose core business model is still hardware sales. These companies are mostly trying to transform their business to include managed services; however, they’ve yet to
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Service Burden Rate – Revisted

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the May 2011 issue of ENX magazine, my service column was titled Calculating Your Service Burden Rate. It discussed the plethora of emails and telephone calls I was receiving requesting my help in determining an appropriate
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