Two Types of Sales Force Effectiveness Opportunities. How best sales leaders are constantly seeking opportunities to improve their Sales System

The Two Types of Sales Force Effectiveness Opportunities.
Each sales organization faces unique sales force opportunities and challenges, which fall into two categories. First, sales leaders need to focus on sales force effectiveness when events originating outside the Sales System require quick and appropriate action. Some examples:
    The company launches a significant new product line.
    An economic boom creates new opportunities for sales.
    The company has acquired a firm with a sales force that covers many of its current customers.
    Because customers are consolidating, the current selling process is no longer effective.
    Competitors have increased their investment in their sales force and are attacking the most profitable market segments.
    As increasing numbers of similar products and services come into the marketplace, the sales force needs to provide unique value.

Second, sales leaders are constantly looking for ways to make their organizations better. They are engaged in ongoing effectiveness hunts designed to improve aspects of the Sales System by responding quickly to signs of trouble, such as:
    The best salespeople are leaving the company, and sales management is ineffective at dealing with salespeople who are not performing well.
    Salespeople are spending too much time calling on friends and too little time with strategically important accounts.
    Profitability has declined because the sales force is cutting prices to meet its sales targets.
    The sales force has missed its goal for several quarters.

The best sales leaders are constantly seeking opportunities to improve their Sales System, even before signs of trouble appear. For example:
    Following several years of strong sales growth, the best sales leaders keep salespeople motivated to seek out new sales opportunities.
    When internal projects demand more time, smart sales leaders maintain a focus on the customer and minimize the time salespeople spend on nonselling activities.
    The best sales leaders understand that building a stronger interface between sales and marketing creates a more powerful bond between the company and its customers.

Two Types of Sales Force Effectiveness Opportunities. How best sales leaders are constantly seeking opportunities to improve their Sales System

Three Key Competencies for a Business Analyst. 10 Key Techniques of Business Analysis.

Good business analysts can make the difference between a poor and a great investment in business and IT improvements. They can also help to resolve issues without jumping to premature conclusions.
The set of business analysis competencies can be divided into three broad groups:
1) Behavioural skills and personal qualities concern the way you think and how you interact with the people around you. They are not specific to business analysis, but are general skills that are important for developing and progressing in any business environment. Behavioural skills are arguably more important than technical or business skills, since they are a prerequisite for working with other people. It is often said that it is easier to give a person with good behavioural skills the techniques they need for their job than to graft behavioural skills on to a good technician. One of the main reasons for this is that good behavioural skills take many years to develop.
2) Business analysts also require business knowledge, which helps them to develop a good understanding of the organisation and the business domain or sector within which it operates. This knowledge is vital if a business analyst is to offer advice and insights that will help improve the organisation's performance. Business knowledge can be developed through reading relevant literature or studying for business qualifications and can be given context by working in a variety of business and project environments.
3) The techniques of business analysis are those specific to the role that differentiate it from other business or IT roles. They are the technical skills required particularly of the business analyst role.

TECHNIQUES
Here are the techniques that the business analyst will need to apply during assignments.

Project Management
The Association for Project Management's Body of Knowledge (APM, 2006) has seven sections that describe the work of a project manager. The Project Management Institute's equivalent publication (PMI 2008) lists the project management context and processes, scope management, integration management, time management, cost management, quality management, human resource management, communications management, risk management and procurement management. It is unlikely that a business analyst will be called upon to display skills in all of these areas, but where the project team is small the analyst may be required to undertake the project manager role. Larger projects often employ a specialist project manager. However, there are some project skills that an analyst should have. For example, understanding project initiation is vital since it allows the analyst to understand, or even define, the terms of reference for the project. It is also important that analysts understand project management planning approaches—as they will have to work within a plan—and are aware of particularly relevant aspects such as dependencies between tasks, quality assurance and risk management.

Strategy Analysis
This covers a range of techniques that can be used to understand the business direction and the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation, or part of an organisation.

Stakeholder Analysis and Management
This includes understanding who are the stakeholders in a business analysis project and working out how their interests are best managed.

Investigation Techniques
Clearly, to get to the root of a business issue the analyst will have to undertake detailed analysis of the area.

Requirements Engineering
This is the set of practices and processes that lead to the development of a set of well-formed business requirements, from which the business and IT solutions can be developed.

Business System Modelling
Business system modelling is an approach to visualising business systems through the creation of conceptual models.

Business Process Modelling
Whereas a business system model looks at the entire business system in overview, more detailed process models are used to map and analyse how the business processes actually work and to help identify opportunities for process improvement.

Data Modelling
Analysing the data held and used within a business system affords valuable insights into how the system operates. For example, what are the data items that are held about our customers? What are the relationships between customers, products and suppliers?

Managing Business Change
This covers the techniques needed to implement changes within an organisation and to make them ‘stick’.

Facilitation Techniques
The interpersonal skills required for effective facilitation—usually exhibited within the context of a workshop—are those described under the heading ‘Behavioural skills and personal qualities’ on page 19. However, there are other qualities that provide the basis for skilled facilitation. It is necessary to apply the process for effective facilitation, in particular in the preparation for a workshop. The analyst also needs the knowledge of a range of techniques and the ability to apply them.
These techniques include such approaches as brainstorming, mindmapping, the use of Post-it notes, Edward de Bono's ‘six thinking hats’ (de Bono 1990) and so on. In addition, the ‘Further reading’ section at the end of this chapter identifies some useful publications. Effective facilitation usually results from a combination of the right qualities in the facilitator and the choice of the right techniques to match the task and the cultural context of the organisation in which it is being used.

Three Key Competencies for a Business Analyst. 10 Key Techniques of Business Analysis.

Supply Chain Management Resource List. 8 Institutions that Contributed to the Development of Supply Chain Management Thinking

Without the financial and intellectual support of institutions and organizations that have specialized in promoting and conducting research in supply chain management and organizing conferences, some of the seminal research studies in supply chain management could not have been carried out. Organizations based on both sides of the Atlantic have contributed work in supply chain management from different perspectives. In this section we have identified eight such institutions that have played a major role in encouraging the generation and dissemination of knowledge in supply chain management issues: the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group; the IMVP (International Motor Vehicle Programme) Programme; IPSERA (International Purchasing and Supply Education and Research Association); CAPS (the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies) in Arizona; the department of Supply Chain Management at Arizona State University; the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University; the Supply Chain Council; and the European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management.

IMP Group. The work of the IMP Group began in the mid- to late 1970s and brought together researchers from Europe and the United States of America who shared a common interest in business-to-business marketing, social networks, and, to a lesser extent, industrial purchasing. The Group remains today a loose collective rather than a formal organization, involving multiple collaborative projects and programmes and an annual conference. Undoubtedly on sheer volume of published output alone the IMP Group has had a major impact on our understanding of business markets. Furthermore, developing expertise in specific areas of their field (such as supply strategy and strategic account management), researchers have contributed to many aspects of supply chain management developments.

IMVP Programme. The International Motor Vehicle Programme, in contrast to the IMP Group, is a formal, funded global research group. Their first contribution was through the best-selling book The Machine that Changed the World (Womack, Jones, and Roos 1990) which introduced the lean operations concepts. Subsequently, various research units (notably Cardiff's Lean Enterprise Research Centre) and developments in supply chain thought (Lamming 1993; Womack and Jones 1996; Hines et al. 2000) have expounded on the lean concept. Undoubtedly the adoption of just in time or lean practices by many organizations has been remarkable and indicates the thirst for supply chain improvements that exists across global industries.

IPSERA. IPSERA was founded in 1990 by a group of academics financially supported by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) in the UK. It has over 200 members from fourteen different countries and is still growing rapidly. From its first conference in 1992 in Glasgow IPSERA has hosted an annual conference and provides regular workshops organized and hosted by local university centres/departments affiliated with IPSERA in most European countries. Other activities include a newsletter on a regular basis that keeps members informed of future events and provides feedback on events already run. It also provides a forum of exchange between members and presents relevant news items and information. Examination of the content and quality of conference proceedings since the first international conference provides a remarkable insight into the development of theoretical and empirical research in the field during the last decade.

CAPS. The Centre for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS) is an independent, non-profit organization, affiliated with the US's National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM) and the Arizona State University. It was founded in 1986 by NAPM and its mission is 'to help organisations achieve competitive advantage by providing them with leading-edge research and benchmarking information to support the evolution of strategic purchasing and supply management'. Over the past decade, the development of the CAPS has run parallel to a fundamental shift in the perceived role of the purchasing profession. CAPS (CAPS 1996) has provided these same professionals with the critical research data necessary to provide a solid basis for their recommendations.
As an independent research organization, CAPS provides companies and purchasing professionals with research and data from a perspective outside the normal business realm. This information is made available to companies as well as to their suppliers.

By making this information available to all, CAPS believes that this research will benefit the widest audience over the long run. By distributing this information widely, CAPS enables organizations to avoid duplicating research activities across the profession.

ASU—Supply Chain Management. Arizona State University was one of the first universities to establish a substantial supply chain management department. Professor Joseph Carter, current director of the department, states that 'The name Supply Chain Management was selected in 1996 to reflect the development of graduate and undergraduate curricula with a clear inter-firm, integrated approach to managing the supply chain'. The department has over thirty academic members of faculty and provides a wide range of degree and executive programmes (including a B.Sc. programme) in Supply Chain Management. The Department is also affiliated with CAPS and CLM.

MSU Marketing and Supply Chain Management. The Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University was the result of the merger of the operations management and procurement faculty (formerly located in the Department of Management) with the faculty of the Department of Marketing and Logistics. Since 1980, these two faculties had cooperated in an inter-departmental programme, the Materials and Logistics Management Program, which integrated procurement, manufacturing, and logistics. Over the intervening years, this programme has achieved a dominant national reputation and strong demand for its products—knowledge, employees, and executive training.

Supply Chain Council (SCC). The Supply Chain Council is a professional organization formed in 1997 by a number of practitioners' initiative representing big multinational companies. It consists of many of the leading industrial companies, logistics, and distribution companies, and supply chain application software companies. It is in its mission statement that standard terminology, best practice models and benchmark metrics should be used for communicating supply chain management practices across companies in a model called the 'Supply Chain Operations Reference-model' (SCOR).

European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management. The European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management published its first issue in 1995. It is published quarterly by Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann. It is one of the few specialized journals on issues regarding supply chain management and has acheived great success within Europe. The journal covers every aspect of the purchasing of goods and services in all sectors.

Supply Chain Management Resource List. 8 Institutions that Contributed to the Development of Supply Chain Management Thinking