Here’s a thought: Everyone sells. Every organisation in the world needs to sell in order to survive. Those with a tangible product can see it and touch it and, above all, need to sell it. Those selling a service also have a product, although it’s intangible. Now, the tangibles may need to see their customers a number of times before they can sell their products. They’ll build up a list of customers and try to manage this list of prospects in a sales pipeline system. The intangibles will, in many instances, need to follow the same process. In their case they may visit a client a number of times to develop an understanding of the client’s need before they can develop a proposal that is acceptable to their client. However, how many of the people selling a service - the accountants, the consultants, and the lawyers - manage their potential sales using a formal sales pipeline? Many will no doubt have a list of potential deals, but how many will give themselves a target for sales? Now don’t get confused here with billings; billings come from orders that have been won. What I’m talking about is a target for winning orders. If you need to bill 100k in a month, how much business do you need to win to allow you to bill that amount? And by when must you have won it in order to deliver it? People selling services must separate sales from billings. They are two different things and need to be managed separately. I’ll look at this further in future posts.

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