The death of
field sales

and other provocative ideas that challenge the status quo of traditional sales

Critical reading for all major account sales environments

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The Machine: A Radical Approach To The Design Of The Sales Function Hardcover & Kindle by Justin Roff-Marsh

What readers say

  • "We doubled our top-line revenue in the year following our implementation of The Machine and are applying these same concepts to an international company we just acquired and seeing the same sort of gains in effectiveness. Justin's book is providing us with an even deeper understanding of the principles that changed our company and continue to drive our sales."

    Aubrey Meador, President of ARCA

  • "There's no reason for the sales department to be the least predictable and most chaotic part of a company. The Machine brings order by removing non-sales work from salespeople and replacing it with centralized scheduling, standardized workflows, specialized resources and formalized management. The Machine offers a proven system for growing sales in an organized, consistent way."

    Andrew Warner, Founder of Mixergy

  • "In his provocative book, The Machine , Justin Roff-Marsh has thoughtfully and forcefully challenged the status quo as it pertains to the design of the sales function. Some readers will be angry, some dismissive, and a select few will be enlightened by this alternative approach. We fall in the latter camp and have found Justin's approach to be a true asset for growing sales in today's complex selling environment!"

    Mike Schleyhahn, President of Swagelok San Diego

  • "The Machine will challenge everything you know about the sales process! It makes a lot of sense, passes all the logical tests, and in the end, might just keep you awake at night. We worked hard to implement a number of these concepts in our organization and I can attest that the ideas are valid and the payoffs are real."

    Jeff Stuart, President of Hydra-Power Systems Inc.

  • "Justin's approach to addressing the tired structure of traditional sales environments is nothing short of revolutionary. The Machine shows management how to drive growth with a tightly synchronized machine, as an alternative to herding individual salespeople. There's no question that this book will be a great investment for any executive that runs a sales team."

    Paul O'Dwyer, Author and Business growth coach

  • "As an operations guy, I'm driven by process, efficiency, and repeatability. The notion that the sales function is an art immune from the rigors of process has never sat well with me. The Machine shatters that myth. The Machine is a must read for any business leader wanting to achieve predictable results from their sales function."

    Marc Allman, COO of AMS Controls

What's inside the book?

Request the Sampler and we will give you the first 4 chapters of The Machine in hard copy plus a heap of bonus content.

Introduction

  • The Titanic is sinking
  • Quiet revolutionaries
  • Are things really that bad?
  • A new assumption

Chapter 1:
After the revolution

  • Four appointments a day, five days a week
  • Management by numbers
  • Arresting the decline
  • Theory into practice

Chapter 2: Four key principles
(and how to win a boat race)

  • Why do we persist?
  • How did we get here?
  • Directions of the solution
  • Putting division of labor to work:
    four key principles

Chapter 3:
Re-envisioning the sales function

  • Principle 1: Centralize scheduling
  • Principle 2: Standardized workflows
  • Principle 3: Specialize resources
  • Principle 4: Formalize management

Chapter 4:
The death of field sales

  • The modern field salesperson is a misnomer
  • Why customers postpone interaction with salespeople
  • The inside-out approach to sales
  • The economics of inside sales
 
Read The First 4 Chapters Free
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Special Bonus
Content
Request The Machine
and you will also get...

Our three most watched webinars

These are our three most popular webinars based on attendee feedback. Get replay links to:

  • Death of Field Sales: Justin argues that sales should essentially be an inside sales function and prescribes a 12-step action plan to rid yourself of the field sales addiction.
  • Your Salespeople: four appointments a day; five days a week: Justin presents the most typical application of Sales Process Engineering (SPE). SPE is a radical approach to the design and management of field-sales environments. This is particularly appropriate for complex sales or engineer-to-order environments.
  • Why CRM Sucks: Justin presents a comprehensive and practical approach to the automation of sales and marketing (with real-world examples and specific technology recommendations).

90-minute keynote presentation

In this live presentation, Justin presents the fundamentals of SPE to a business audience and engages in some lively discussions over contentious issues. This video is an ideal way to share the basics of SPE with your team.

Reengineering the Sales Process

This is the full (digital) edition of Justin's (the author of The Machine ) first book. This book is a collection of articles (written over a 10-year period) spanning issues including, sales process design, advertising and promotions, marketing strategy and much more. Interestingly, Justin foresees the popular concept of inbound marketing (10 years before this term becomes popular) with his relationship-centric marketing model.

Is your sales process broken?(Why you need this book!)

Let's be honest. Sales in a typical organization (most organizations in fact), is seriously broken. But rather than focusing on the obvious dysfunction, management is busy with incremental improvement initiatives:

  • Sales training
  • Sales force automation (technology of various types)
  • Sales force automation (technology of various types)
  • New commission structures and incentives

Trouble is, none of these activities actually address the root cause of the dysfunction. Sure, they may offer a temporary lift but things always go back to the way they were.

  • Salespeople go back to spending most of their time chasing production and meeting the various non-selling demands on their time AND little of their time selling.
  • New markets and business opportunities get ignored in the chase for quick sales and low hanging fruit.
  • Sales and the other departments (particularly fulfilment) regularly erupt to conflict.
  • And the silo between marketing and sales is so huge that you'd be forgiven for thinking they worked for different companies.

A new, better alternative to sales

The Machine presents a radically different approach to the design and management of the sales function. It challenges the standard sales models and presents a radically new environment where salespeople just sell (four sales meetings a day, five days week).

And an environment where all other activities are performed by a tightly synchronized, head-office-based, sales-support team. We call this new way of thinking Sales Process Engineering (SPE). Those organizations (and there are many) that apply SPE discover the following benefits:

 
  • A huge increase in the volume of sales appointments (on a per-person basis).
  • A significant increase in the territory that can be covered by the existing sales team.
  • A dramatic improvement in customer-service quality.
  • NO increase in operating expenses.

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Country not listed above? You can read the sampler here