If you want to avoid undermining your hard-won efforts to be more profitable, more scalable, and more efficient, you need to keep your sales strategy focused.

Imagine you’re back in summer camp canoeing with other campers. You get on the lake and find that the other...

Nothing hinders strategic planning like unpredictability. And, as you well know, our current business environment is anything but predictable.  Clients’...

I vividly remember my first day of second grade. My family had just moved to Dallas, and we were living...

Many years ago I found myself in search of the proper title for my position. Job titles were not a big thing at my employer, but we had a business reason to devise one for me. A preferred provider agreement needed a key organizational contact and "Tom" was not going to cut it. I thought about the daily tasks I seemed to be responsible for. I sold things. I defined operational processes. I tried to herd salespeople. The warehouse supervisor reported to me. What am I? I could not find a parallel in other companies like ours. Everyone was either "Sales" or "Operations".

The struggle is real. I have spent most of my professional life managing the tendencies of sales and operations teams to conflict with one another. I have a mantra and it goes like this: "Sales' job is to sell what Operations can support. Operations' job is to support whatever sales sells." The battle field is much more sophisticated than it was when I started. We no longer rely on paper files and clip boards to do our work. I can't just stroll over to a salesperson's desk and find a phone number in his Rolodex or search his phone messages for the latest changes in projects. Likewise, it is nearly impossible for a salesperson to monitor all the operation and logistics processes that touch their projects.