Circuits Assembly - April 2008 - (Page 61)

Program Management How do you suggest managing rogue salespersons – those who are effective in closing deals but decidedly not by the book or team players? It depends on the type of rogue they are. I think the key is, if they are just a good salesperson but not excited about sales meetings, that’s one thing. If they are high achievers but don’t necessarily bond, you put up with it because true competitors are not necessarily team-centered. On the other hand, if they are making promises you can’t deliver, you need to cut that person loose. This isn’t a car where the buyer drives it off the lot and the relationship ends. This is a long-term relationship, and if you start disappointing right off the bat, you will not be profitable and it’s not in anyone’s best interests. While relatively rare in EMS, some companies do use a model where the lowest performer each year is terminated. You have a 12-to-18-month sales cycle; it is very hard to tell the difference between a good salesperson who takes awhile to close accounts and a poor salesperson. You need a good mechanism for evaluating the leads that come in. I recommend a phase strategy. We call it phase migration, which represents the stages of the account as its gets closer to closing [see figure]. It shows whether this account is in phase 1; this is about to close, etc., where you migrate them down a funnel, because that allows you to have interim measurements of your prospects. If the salesperson never gets past the quoting phase, it’s a good sign you have someone who is good at activity but not much of a closer. What did you yourself learn over the course of writing this book? I think I learned I could work on three hours sleep for a year [laughs]. It forced me to think back over the experiences I’ve had over the past 27 years, and because of the longer format of the book, I did more introspection on the fine details of the account acquisition process than I had in a while. I’ve always said that account acquisition is a process, but in writing the book, I really peeled back the onion to look closely at elements in each stage of the process. A good analogy is the difference between an internally developed quality system and an ISO 9001 certified quality system. When ISO certification first became popular, a lot of companies that thought they had good internal systems found they still needed to evaluate their processes and then document them more thoroughly. What writing the book did was make me really drill down and ask, What are all the elements important for me to talk about in making these easy for readers to build a robust account acquisition process? It forced me to organize the “knowledge transfer” element at a much more detailed level than I’ve done for articles and workshops. ■ Mike Buetow is editor in chief of Circuits Assembly. FLEXIBLE Customizable Data Extraction: “Delta-T” for thermocouple groupings across Board or BGA Hey…did we mention 20 Channels? Find out more at: www.ecd.com/mm20 circuitsassembly.com Circuits Assembly APRIL 2008 61 http://www.ecd.com/mm20 http://www.ecd.com/mm20 http://circuitsassembly.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Circuits Assembly - April 2008

Circuits Assembly - April 2008 Contents Caveat Lector Industry News Market Watch Talking Heads Screen Printing Better Manufacturing Design and Modeling of High-Speed, High-Density 3-D CSPs and Memory Modules The ‘Big Brush Off’ Revisited Impact of Soldering Atmosphere on Solder Joint Formation Beyond Moore’s Law ESD Control For Class 0 ESDS Devices Growing Your Brand This Year’s Model Tech Tips Reflow Soldering Process Doctor Pb-Free Lessons Learned Getting Lean Equipment Advances Apex Product Preview Ad Index Assembly Insider Technical Abstracts

Circuits Assembly - April 2008

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