It is interesting how salespeople and sales managers always seem to find time to try to “fix the deal” at the end, attempting to correct all the mistakes that were made in a 9- to 12-month sales cycle. But they don’t have time to conduct strategy sessions along the way to avoid chaos at the end.

When do we find time to have strategy sessions? With teleconferences and Web meetings, it is easier now than ever before. Strategy sessions are a labor-saving device. The time saved by not selling to the wrong accounts, not selling to the wrong people, and not doing the wrong action items to win will more than pay for the time investment. The return on time invested in strategy sessions is anywhere from 2:1 to 10:1.

We’ve turned millions of dollars worth of deals around in strategy sessions with our clients and have seen them work. But it has to be a matter of discipline. Lexmark does it every Monday. Some companies have strategy sessions at each change of phase in the forecast. Other companies simply say, “No review, no resources.” If it’s not worth 30 minutes of your time to review the strategy with the team, why is it worth 15 hours of their time to travel across the country and look unprofessional?

The main reason that salespeople should have a strategy session is because they want to win and will have a better plan and a more committed team if they have invested the time to lead.

Enemies of Teamwork

For some companies, the biggest barrier to success is themselves. Their culture and values are so rotten inside that when you leave their building, you just want to take a shower. They can’t partner with anyone else because they can’t partner with themselves.

If this is your prospect, you should seriously consider whether the company is worth your time in the end. If there is a project involved, it probably won’t be successful. If it is the company you work for, you probably won’t be successful. Leave. Fast!

It’s not worth the money.

These are the activities that are the sand in the gears of a successful team. They destroy trust. Use the preceding list to evaluate your own company's team behavior. Use it to evaluate your customers to see if you really want to sell to them. Then evaluate yourself to see if you have engaged in any of these activities. The best salespeople build strong teams inside their own organizations to get things done for their customers.

While there have been some successes, customer relationship management (CRM), as it has been executed, has become one of the biggest misnomers in the business world.

It hasn’t been about customers, it hasn’t been about relationships, and it hasn’t been about management. In fact, when done poorly, CRM can serve as a barrier between you and your best clients. In reality, CRM has been about cost reduction, and the net effect has been to commoditize relationships by allowing customers to have a “personal” relationship with a computer.

In my personal life, I have fired four vendors who implemented CRM systems badly: my landscape chemical company, a florist, my home alarm company, and several banks. (In fact, I was bank-free for over 15 years. I moved everything to an online brokerage account.)

My landscape chemical company was the first to go. I have been blessed to own 12 acres, just north of Atlanta. Although I have a large yard, I represented only one account to this particular company. Different zones in my yard require different care, and because the company didn’t have mapping capabilities, its system had only one description for my yard. On top of that, every time they changed drivers, we had to start all over because their system did not provide continuity of information, which is one of the primary purposes of a CRM system.

The next to go was my florist. Several years ago we had a personal tragedy in our family and I needed five flower arrangements on a Friday, the beginning of a holiday weekend, for a funeral on Saturday. I called my usual florist and explained the situation. I told the salesperson that I would be right over (the store was only a few blocks away). When I got there, the store was closed. I got on my cell phone again and called the salesperson back.

“I am standing outside your door, and it doesn’t look like anyone is inside,” I said.

There was a long pause.

“Can I please speak to a manager?” I asked.

Another long pause.

“Where are you?” I demanded.

“In Denver,” she said.

When I asked her why she didn’t tell me this when I first called, she explained that the shop had recently been acquired by a larger company, and all the records had been moved over to a new system.

I canceled my order and called a local florist, Nature’s Rainbow, who already had my preferences and credit card on file. The salesperson told me that he would have five flower arrangements ready the next day, and that he would work as long as it took to get them done. Guess who had my business from then on?

My home alarm company was next. A few years ago, my house was struck by lightning, and it knocked out my alarm system. I called the 800 number to ask the company for help. The person on the other end was polite enough, but I soon realized that she was in Salt Lake City. My records, she told me, were in Kansas City — again because of a merger, which happens often in this industry.