Lee B. Salz is President of Sales Dodo and author of Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager. He founded Sales Dodo with the fundamental purpose of helping companies remain competitive in the ever-changing business world. Adapt and Thrive! Those who fail to adapt become extinct, just like the dodo bird of ages ago. Many laugh at the use of the word “dodo,” but there is nothing funny about a business losing its competitive edge due to unmanaged change.

One of the areas where Salz has found companies failing to adapt and change is in their sales organization. In his newly released book, Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager, Salz tackles the issue of the disconnect between salespeople and their managers head on. This gap is caused by the belief that great salespeople can be hired and will be successful without any company-provided support systems or structure.  At the other end of the spectrum, these same companies promote salespeople to sales managers and provide little to no training for this new role. Most sales managers are not equipped to build a successful, scalable sales organization thus creating this sales chasm.

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Katherine Jones is the Director of Marketing for NetSuite, Inc., a Bay Area company that provides integrated CRM/ERP solutions as a hosted service to middle market enterprises. Her work includes the Services vertical at NetSuite, providing on-demand solutions for service-providing companies.   She was a research director at Aberdeen Group in Boston for eight years, focusing on research on ERP and mid-market companies.  Her focus there was on the fundamental processes of business operations and strategy, and the effects of technological change and innovation on these processes within the global organization. She has written widely on many areas of technology and business practices.

A veteran in enterprise applications, Jones has been responsible for technical product marketing and strategic alliance management in several computer companies since 1984. She founded Independent Consulting Services in 1994 to provide marketing services to high tech companies. Prior to a high technology career, Jones was a university dean, involved in academic administration, research, and teaching.

Jones is a frequent speaker and is widely published in the U.S. and abroad.

When Jim Ward founded BrainSell in 1994, his goal was to give businesses the insights and tools needed to thrive, even in challenging economies.  A prominent turnaround specialist, Ward had spent more than 23 years helping small-to-medium businesses apply innovative sales and marketing techniques in order to improve performance.   Having helped a variety of U.S. and Canadian companies transform into growing, profitable organizations, Ward determined that strategic CRM (customer relationship management) was key to each company’s success. 

Since then, Ward has built BrainSell into a dynamic CRM reseller organization that is dedicated to helping customers achieve victories.  His focus on hiring CRM professionals with real-world experience, and making them an integral part of their customers’ teams, has enabled BrainSell to develop a strong base of satisfied customers who rave about the company’s ability to deliver bottom-line results.  Having experienced year-over-year growth since its founding, BrainSell became a Top 10 Business Partner for Sage Software in North America under Ward’s leadership. 

Ward is a recognized expert in CRM.  He has addressed many organizations and published a variety of articles on how to use CRM to enhance sales and business prosperity.  

Ward has served on Sage Software’s CRM division Business Partner Advisory Council sub-committees. 

An honors graduate from Bentley College, Ward is committed to giving back to the community.  Driven by the belief that hard work and integrity pay dividends, Ward devotes time to a variety of civic projects.  

BrainSell’s website can be found at http://www.brainsell.net.

Chuck Schaeffer is the CEO of Aplicor, a global software publisher of subscription-based and hosted CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software solutions for high growth, middle-market and enterprise organizations.

Chuck is also a member of the FBI Infragard, Malcome Baldrige Board of Examiners and several not for profit organizations. Chuck’s profile may be viewed at his blog or LinkedIn.

The CRM Advisor

You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question: “When should I get my IT department involved in my CRM project?”

A: Any CRM initiative is more likely to succeed when all key stakeholders are involved in the project from the very beginning. This includes not only managers and end users from functional departments, but IT support staff as well. Read more »