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Message
I'm looking for a business book for corporate executives
Posted on 9/16/22 at 5:33 pm
Posted on 9/16/22 at 5:33 pm
This is a long post, so if you prefer, skip to the last paragraph and consider if you have a recommended business book for me. Thanks.
Every member of our account management team, from junior account managers all the way up to senior vertical channel manager has just been told they are being sent a book to read, The Challenger Sale.
I'm all for it. Honestly, new perspectives are great to consider. I'm telling all of my staff, though, to download either Joosr if they use iPhones or Blinkest if they use Android and expense it. They condense the book down to about a 15-20 minute read of the salient points.
However, in counter, I would love to propose a book for the upper management to read that tells them how inefficient and self-defeating it is to have a reduced inside sales support staff that requires them to push tasks back to out to the account managers, taking them in a hundred different directions, disturbing their flow of sales activities and removing them from the field to do these tasks.
I'm very close to retirement, and have no problems with making my thoughts known.
So I will share some of the disfunction that eats away at my team's week:
1. an Account Manager develops a business relationship and cultivates an opportunity. In order to move the opportunity forward, there are documents needed by the client. These documents are considered confidential technical docs that cannot be released to competitors, so the rep has to fill out a form in order to request either a unilateral NDA (if only our company will be sharing technical /confidential info), or a bilateral NDA, where both companies have confidential information to share.
1a. That form needs to be sent to a gatekeeper, who documents the request in a log, and then sends it to a staff attorney, where the request gets in queue with other legal requests.
Up to this point, it's fine. but then...
1b. Legal sends it back to the gatekeeper, who sends it to the account manager who has to send it to his POC at the client, who sends it to their staff attorney. Their staff attorney doesn't like the language, so marks it up, sends to the POC at that company, who then returns it to my account manager, who sends it to the gatekeeper, who logs it and sends it back to our staff attorney. This can go back and forth, and when working with defense contractors and scientific research centers, can sometimes take months (example: we've been working on an NDA with Tesla for over eight months and it still isn't resolved). This goes back and forth for as long as it takes and eats into the account manager's time, clutters up their Inbox, and can happen sporadically and can't be managed in a schedule. Then after getting an approved copy, signatures have to be obtained. That goes back and forth, and internally, requires a legal stamp, then goes back to the gatekeeper, who has to get approval from a company VP, who sends it back to the gatekeeper, who then sends it to the senior admin of the CIO to get the NDA approved and signed. Once signed, it goes back to the senior admin, then back to the gatekeeper then back to my account manager, then from him/her to the client, then to their legal dept., then eventually back to my account manager, who sends it to the gatekeeper for recording. In addition the account manager then has to upload it to Salesforce and register it in the account as having an NDA, then has to use the Chatter function to let the gatekeeper and me know, as well as the head of engineering, that the NDA is in place and now, finally, documentation can be shared.
Now, for an actual order, here's what happens in most cases:
1. If it is a controlled product or if it is going outside the US, the account manager has to fill out and submit a form to trade compliance, describing what the customer will be doing with it and where it will be sold. Trade compliance comes back with many questions that the account manager has to chase down. This is just to get approval. Once received, that has to be logged into the Opportunity in Salesforce and a notification sent out using chatter to a bunch of different mid-level managers and the sales support staff.
2. The account manager has made the quote and now has a purchase order. here is where the real fun begins.
2a. The order has to be loaded into salesforce, and a myriad of people notified. The Terms and conditions of the company we do business with are on their P.O. If they are not in alignment, the same gatekeeper has to submit it to the legal department for review. In addition, being a government project (likely), there are significant flow-down clauses included that have to be reviewed to make certain we are in compliance or they don't apply and need to be stricken or have language changed. This goes back to the gatekeeper, who sends it back to the account manager who has to contact his POC at the client and they in turn have to send this to their legal team, and the same scenario as I posted above takes place, over and over and over, eating up my account managers' time and attention. And the account manager is responsible for documenting each emailed correspondence into the sales opportunity in Salesforce.
3. Finally, all of that is accepted, and the Account Manager now has to make a request for allocation of product and wait for that approval to come and then notify the client of any expected delays.
4. If this is a new client, now my account manager has to send another set of forms to the account to complete and return. This includes a statement that the technology won't be used in weapons or nuclear systems, plus they need to fill out an onboarding form, and a credit form and the account manager has to chase these down and get them in from the client, and approved by trade compliance and then by Credit. If there are issues with credit or payment needs to be handled by credit card then, there are more interactions to gather proforma invoices, send to the client, arrange for wire transfer, or to receive a check or take a credit card. The account manager has to double check shipping addresses, determine who is paying for shipping, collect FedEx or UPS numbers, etc. If it is international, the account manager has to track down the information from the client to determine if their FedEx or UPS account also handles the incoming tariff's, taxes or duties or if we have to determine those ourselves and bill separately or add to the invoice.
Then there are the two and three times weekly meetings, weekly sales reports and those special moments when someone above me decides that "There's a lot of new people at the company who don't know your team or what they do. Have your team each create a 40 minute presentation about their role and their market, and while they're at it, give us a look at their wins for the year, too, so we can see where they stand against quota. We'll set up a meeting for three days from now. Have your team send the presentations in two days so we can review them first." Inevitably, they want some things left out or added and the account managers have to stop everything they are doing to beat the deadline for the meeting.
Sorry, I know I'm venting here, but I've already lost two really awesome salesmen and one awesome saleswoman over the last two years to this crap I'm pointing out. They kept getting their quotas raised BUT having their available time to sell constantly reduced. It's just nuts how the upper management do not see this.
IS THERE A BOOK I CAN THROW BACK AT UPPER MANAGEMENT THAT TELLS THEM HOW MUCH MONEY THEY ARE LOSING AND HOW INEFFICIENT AND UNPRODUCTIVE THEY HAVE MADE THINGS BY NOT HIRING STAFF TO HANDLE ALL THIS ADMINISTRATIVE CRAP THAT THEY FORCE ONTO EVERY ACCOUNT MANAGER????
Every member of our account management team, from junior account managers all the way up to senior vertical channel manager has just been told they are being sent a book to read, The Challenger Sale.
I'm all for it. Honestly, new perspectives are great to consider. I'm telling all of my staff, though, to download either Joosr if they use iPhones or Blinkest if they use Android and expense it. They condense the book down to about a 15-20 minute read of the salient points.
However, in counter, I would love to propose a book for the upper management to read that tells them how inefficient and self-defeating it is to have a reduced inside sales support staff that requires them to push tasks back to out to the account managers, taking them in a hundred different directions, disturbing their flow of sales activities and removing them from the field to do these tasks.
I'm very close to retirement, and have no problems with making my thoughts known.
So I will share some of the disfunction that eats away at my team's week:
1. an Account Manager develops a business relationship and cultivates an opportunity. In order to move the opportunity forward, there are documents needed by the client. These documents are considered confidential technical docs that cannot be released to competitors, so the rep has to fill out a form in order to request either a unilateral NDA (if only our company will be sharing technical /confidential info), or a bilateral NDA, where both companies have confidential information to share.
1a. That form needs to be sent to a gatekeeper, who documents the request in a log, and then sends it to a staff attorney, where the request gets in queue with other legal requests.
Up to this point, it's fine. but then...
1b. Legal sends it back to the gatekeeper, who sends it to the account manager who has to send it to his POC at the client, who sends it to their staff attorney. Their staff attorney doesn't like the language, so marks it up, sends to the POC at that company, who then returns it to my account manager, who sends it to the gatekeeper, who logs it and sends it back to our staff attorney. This can go back and forth, and when working with defense contractors and scientific research centers, can sometimes take months (example: we've been working on an NDA with Tesla for over eight months and it still isn't resolved). This goes back and forth for as long as it takes and eats into the account manager's time, clutters up their Inbox, and can happen sporadically and can't be managed in a schedule. Then after getting an approved copy, signatures have to be obtained. That goes back and forth, and internally, requires a legal stamp, then goes back to the gatekeeper, who has to get approval from a company VP, who sends it back to the gatekeeper, who then sends it to the senior admin of the CIO to get the NDA approved and signed. Once signed, it goes back to the senior admin, then back to the gatekeeper then back to my account manager, then from him/her to the client, then to their legal dept., then eventually back to my account manager, who sends it to the gatekeeper for recording. In addition the account manager then has to upload it to Salesforce and register it in the account as having an NDA, then has to use the Chatter function to let the gatekeeper and me know, as well as the head of engineering, that the NDA is in place and now, finally, documentation can be shared.
Now, for an actual order, here's what happens in most cases:
1. If it is a controlled product or if it is going outside the US, the account manager has to fill out and submit a form to trade compliance, describing what the customer will be doing with it and where it will be sold. Trade compliance comes back with many questions that the account manager has to chase down. This is just to get approval. Once received, that has to be logged into the Opportunity in Salesforce and a notification sent out using chatter to a bunch of different mid-level managers and the sales support staff.
2. The account manager has made the quote and now has a purchase order. here is where the real fun begins.
2a. The order has to be loaded into salesforce, and a myriad of people notified. The Terms and conditions of the company we do business with are on their P.O. If they are not in alignment, the same gatekeeper has to submit it to the legal department for review. In addition, being a government project (likely), there are significant flow-down clauses included that have to be reviewed to make certain we are in compliance or they don't apply and need to be stricken or have language changed. This goes back to the gatekeeper, who sends it back to the account manager who has to contact his POC at the client and they in turn have to send this to their legal team, and the same scenario as I posted above takes place, over and over and over, eating up my account managers' time and attention. And the account manager is responsible for documenting each emailed correspondence into the sales opportunity in Salesforce.
3. Finally, all of that is accepted, and the Account Manager now has to make a request for allocation of product and wait for that approval to come and then notify the client of any expected delays.
4. If this is a new client, now my account manager has to send another set of forms to the account to complete and return. This includes a statement that the technology won't be used in weapons or nuclear systems, plus they need to fill out an onboarding form, and a credit form and the account manager has to chase these down and get them in from the client, and approved by trade compliance and then by Credit. If there are issues with credit or payment needs to be handled by credit card then, there are more interactions to gather proforma invoices, send to the client, arrange for wire transfer, or to receive a check or take a credit card. The account manager has to double check shipping addresses, determine who is paying for shipping, collect FedEx or UPS numbers, etc. If it is international, the account manager has to track down the information from the client to determine if their FedEx or UPS account also handles the incoming tariff's, taxes or duties or if we have to determine those ourselves and bill separately or add to the invoice.
Then there are the two and three times weekly meetings, weekly sales reports and those special moments when someone above me decides that "There's a lot of new people at the company who don't know your team or what they do. Have your team each create a 40 minute presentation about their role and their market, and while they're at it, give us a look at their wins for the year, too, so we can see where they stand against quota. We'll set up a meeting for three days from now. Have your team send the presentations in two days so we can review them first." Inevitably, they want some things left out or added and the account managers have to stop everything they are doing to beat the deadline for the meeting.
Sorry, I know I'm venting here, but I've already lost two really awesome salesmen and one awesome saleswoman over the last two years to this crap I'm pointing out. They kept getting their quotas raised BUT having their available time to sell constantly reduced. It's just nuts how the upper management do not see this.
IS THERE A BOOK I CAN THROW BACK AT UPPER MANAGEMENT THAT TELLS THEM HOW MUCH MONEY THEY ARE LOSING AND HOW INEFFICIENT AND UNPRODUCTIVE THEY HAVE MADE THINGS BY NOT HIRING STAFF TO HANDLE ALL THIS ADMINISTRATIVE CRAP THAT THEY FORCE ONTO EVERY ACCOUNT MANAGER????
4
Posted on 9/16/22 at 8:26 pm to HubbaBubba
After doing a search - I found The 29 Hour Work Day by Stephanie and Ethan Bull - but I don’t think that’s what you are really looking for - it’s more how to hire the right person to be an executive assistant…
Posted on 9/16/22 at 8:49 pm to HubbaBubba
Extreme Ownership might be good as it’s all about entrusting the people on the ground to have operational awareness and execute on it.
5 Dysfunctions of Team is also good.
5 Dysfunctions of Team is also good.
Posted on 9/17/22 at 7:15 am to HubbaBubba
I didn’t read the whole thing (apologies) but possibly The 4 Disciplines of Execution might be of some help.
Posted on 9/17/22 at 9:19 am to Tigertown in ATL
quote:No apologies necessary. I wrote all that to amplify just how much is going on back and forth that pull account managers away from new business development and delivery of new orders. It's very frustrating.
I didn’t read the whole thing (apologies) but possibly The 4 Disciplines of Execution might be of some help.
Sales support should be exactly that. The orders my team delivers are very clear and unambiguous. The account manager should be able to make a pass-off to an internal specialists that handles any and all matters related to documents, legal, shipping, scheduling, and payments. We're talking about a multi-billion $ company, not a small company. Current management believes in a "high touch" model where the account manager is the face of the company for everything and who is vested in making certain everything gets handled correctly. So, I understand their reasoning, but in doing this, they've taken people who used to be great support, passed the majority of their support responsibilities back onto the shoulders of the account managers and given new responsibilities to the sales support staff instead of hiring new people.
Posted on 9/17/22 at 5:15 pm to HubbaBubba
Extreme ownership, and they can also hire the people who wrote it.
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