Everyone has an opinion of what sales and selling are all about. Some view it as an honorable profession that requires substantial skills. Others view it as a less than desirable endeavor, the purpose of which is to convince people to buy something whether they need it or not.

This month's white paper, The Nature of Sales considers the nature of sales and selling from the buyer's prospective, and helps you to understand the implications as a seller.

It is in vogue for companies to use WebEx, Microsoft Live Meeting, and equivalents to conduct remote sales calls and presentations to increase efficiency and save money. While we are big fans of efficient sales processes, we suggest you make sure that using this methodology will meet your potential customer's needs ... and yours.

While it is often just as effective from the customer's perspective for you give your presentation via the Internet, you have to ask yourself whether this is actually the case. Remember, your purpose in any step in your sales process is to make sure you are in alignment with the customer's buying process and that your action will help them move forward in their process.

If a presentation, demonstration, or whatever is the appropriate next step in the customer's buying process and you can provide that demonstration via the Internet, why shouldn't you? Because you're not there to see how they react. Having sat in on the receiving side of a number of "well down the buying process" demos via the Internet, it is clear to us that the sales person can lose a lot by not being in the room.

The sales person can miss the nuances and non- verbal communications between the various parties in the meeting. If you are presenting to a group of people, their interaction, which is hard to capture when you are not there, can be vitally important to your understanding of the dynamics of what is going on ... really.

Given our documented belief in the use of inside sales people (For example, read for the first time, or reread our white paper Secrets To Inside Sales by clicking the link below.) to replace outside sales people in much of the sales process, why would we be advising against the use of Internet remote presentations? The answer is that we are not ... all the time. We are suggesting that you think very hard about what you are trying to help the customer accomplish with this activity and then ask yourself (honestly) if you can determine how well it was accomplished if you are not there.

It is our belief that a realistic review of the process would suggest fewer Web sales calls. But, if efficiency is your measure, you'll have a lower travel budget than anyone else. Of course, they may have more sales.

Abraham Wald was a statistician during WWII. One task he was given was to evaluate aircraft vulnerability to enemy fire. Based on the analysis of damaged aircraft, it was clear that certain parts were hit more often than other parts. Military personnel therefore recommended that those parts be reinforced.

Wald came to the opposite conclusion. He, correctly, concluded that the data was biased. The only planes being reviewed were planes that returned from combat. Planes lost in combat were not part of the data set. He concluded that the planes lost in combat were probably hit elsewhere, which was likely a critical area, and those areas should be considered for reinforcement.

Are you using selection bias in your marketing/sales decisions? Are you only looking at customer feedback from current customers? What about the ones who defected? What about the ones you never got a chance to serve? Are you looking at new product success based on products launched? What about the products your chose not to launch? Did a competitor bring that one to market and succeed?

For more thoughts on decision bias, read for the first time, or reread, Bob Johnson's article, by clicking the link below.

That's a question we have all asked ... more than once. Clearly some training works, and some is questionable. There's also the issue of turnover. Some companies ask themselves why they should invest in training employees who are going to leave anyway.

And yet, the question lingers: Does it pay to train employees? And, how much should we spend on training. Studies suggest that the typical firm spends 2% of sales on training. Is that good enough? Would spending more help?

We can cite companies, such as CDW, that have done very well compared to their peers, and spend substantially more on training than do other companies. But is that the real reason they do better? How can we find out if training makes a difference?

One answer comes from an investment fund that focuses exclusively on companies that spend at least twice as much on training as the national average of 2%.The fund has returned an average of 24% per year beating the S&P500 by 4% over two years. Not enough to be proof, but perhaps an indication.

We continue to believe that training, tailored to your specific company needs, is the right answer. Whether you use on-site training, or our Accelerator Groups, the right training can provide value payback ... quickly. If you'd like to know more about our training programs, click the link below.

We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.

Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide any additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or innovation to help you increase your sales, let us know.

Our mission is to help you improve the performance of your System to Manufacture Customers^®.