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Catalyst Articles

• Marketing Starts in the CFOs Office: Marketing When the Goals are Big and the Resources are Not
  If you are that person with the fat marketing budget and little accountability, read no further. This article is not for you. But, if you’re the one getting squeezed by the CFO to work miracles, this article is for you.
• Learning from Experience: Implementing After Action Reviews in Your Sales Force
  The problem with many sales organizations is not laziness, lack or selling skills or the myriad of other issues CEOs point to when sales are down. The problem with most sales organizations is the inability to learn from experience. Sales people are knowledge workers. Knowledge is their most valuable asset. Yet most sales organizations have no viable way to harness or exploit the knowledge gained everyday from their salespeople.
• Death by Assumption: Why Great Planning Strategies Fail
  The absence of "assumption management" is a common cause of the death of many strategic plans. One of the most common examples of this is the tendency for planning teams to debate forecasts but never the underlying drivers of performance.
• Disconnected Marketing in a Connected World
  Many executives have an uneasiness about marketing they find difficult to articulate. In many companies, marketing is a group of "creative" people who spend lots of money on projects that have no measurable return on investment. They are a necessary evil rather than a source of competitive strength. If you share this sense of disdain, this article may help you articulate what you are feeling and provide some real answers to give you some direction in dealing with it.
• The Power of a Sales Playbook: Embedding Discipline and Best Practices in Your Sales Force
  Is there a way to put discipline into the sales function? Won’t discipline kill the spirit and motivation of a good sales team? Good sales people are typically high-energy, relationship-oriented people with a low tolerance for structure. It’s hard to be successful while following strict and restrictive rules in a high-stakes game with shifting goals, fierce competition, and multiple layers of decision makers, influencers, and spoilers.
• Reengineer Your Sales Cycle: Reduce your time-to-sale and increase your lead-to-close rate
  The sales cycle is a system of activities that starts when a new lead is generated and ends when a sale is booked. Like any business process, the sales cycle can be streamlined to reduce inefficiencies, decrease time between lead and order, and increase the lead-to-sale conversion rate.
• Three Rules for Hiring A Players
  It is very hard for people to admit that they are not good judges of character. In fact, just about every one I know thinks they are superb judges of people. But is this true? Are people generally good at assessing the qualities and evaluating the talents of others?
• Leadership Matters: Values and Dysfunctional Dispositions
  It is very hard for people to admit that they are not good judges of character. In fact, just about every one I know thinks they are superb judges of people. But is this true? Are people generally good at assessing the qualities and evaluating the talents of others?
• Some Common Misconceptions About Values
  It is very hard for people to admit that they are not good judges of character. In fact, just about every one I know thinks they are superb judges of people. But is this true? Are people generally good at assessing the qualities and evaluating the talents of others?