Sales Forecasting Simulator

The Stanford Graduate School of Business has a class called "Building and Managing Professional Sales Organizations" that allows students to gain experience forecasting sales using a simulator. The simulator allows students to experience the difficulty of forecasting from the perspective of a sales rep and from the perspective of a sales manager.

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0711/feature-simulator.html

I wonder when they're going to release their simulator for the PS3...

Sales Process Diversity

I've been helping a small division of a very large company implement our CRM solution. It's been a unique experience as I've been playing two roles on the project - Technical Consultant and Functional Consultant. The best part about the Functional Consulting role is that you get to learn about the customer's business processes at an even greater depth and breadth than you typically do as a Technical Consultant.

This particular customer has a very unique sales process. They're selling products whose costs are heavily influenced by commodity metals prices and their sales cycle is quite long - typically 18+ months. It's been fascinating to see how those two factors have influenced the way that they sell their products.

Working With Sales

I have been taking a break from my typical Technical Architect design-related duties the past couple of weeks and have been working with the sales team on a deal for a large media company. It has been interesting to see the sales guys in action since I usually don't get involved in a project until after the sale has been completed.

The sales/consulting dichotomy is particularly interesting. The sales guys deal with much higher-level requirements than we do in consulting. As a result, the solutions that sales pitches often differ significantly from the solutions that consulting actually implements. I think it would be an interesting experiment to have some of our sales engineers actually work on an implementation that they have sold. In addition to providing a feedback loop to the sales process, such an experience would have the added benefit of lending our sales engineers additional legitimacy. Statements such as, "I just implemented Feature X at Company Y last month and here's how we did it" have incredible power with customers.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to wear a different hat for a couple of weeks and it looks like we are going to get the order!