Dialing
For Dollars: p.172-173

Suppose you are a

salesperson,
and your

company’s
CRM forecasts

that
your quarterly sales will be

substantially
under quota.

You
call your best

customers
to increase

sales,
but no one is

willing
to buy more.

Your
boss says

that it
has been a

bad
quarter for all of

the
salespeople. It’s

so bad,
in fact, that

the
vice president of

sales
has authorized

a
20-percent

discount
on new

orders.
The only

stipulation
is that

customers
must take

delivery
prior to the end of

the
quarter so that

accounting
can book the

order.
“Start dialing for

dollars,”
she says, “and get

what
you can. Be creative.”

Using
your CRM, you

identify
your top

customers
and present the

discount
offer to them. The

first
customer balks at increasing her inventory, “I

just
don’t think we can sell that much.”

“Well,”
you respond, “how about if we agree to

take
back any inventory you don’t sell next quarter?”

(By
doing this, you increase your current sales and

commission,
and you also help your company make

its
quarterly sales projections. The additional product

is
likely to come back next quarter, but you think,

“Hey, that’s then and this is now.”)

“OK,” she says,
“but I

want you to
stipulate the

return option on
the

purchase order.”

You know that you

cannot write that
on the

purchase order
because

accounting won’t
book all of

the order if you
do. So you tell her

that you’ll send
her an email with that

stipulation. She
increases her order,

and accounting
books the full

amount.

With another
customer, you

try a second strategy.
Instead

of offering the
discount, you

offer the product
at full price, but

agree to pay a
20-percent credit in

the next quarter.
That way you can

book the full price
now. You pitch

this offer as
follows: “Our

marketing
department analyzed

past sales using
our fancy new

computer system,
and we

know that
increasing

advertising will
cause

additional sales.
So, if you

order more product
now,

next quarter we’ll
give

you 20 percent of
the

order back to pay
for

advertising.”

In truth, you doubt
the customer will spend

the money on
advertising. Instead, they’ll just take

the credit and sit
on a bigger inventory. That will

kill your sales to
them next quarter, but you’ll

solve that problem
then.

Even with these
additional orders, you’re still

under quota. In
desperation, you decide to sell

product to a
fictitious company that is “owned” by

your
brother-in-law. You set up a new account, and

when accounting
calls your brother-in-law for a

credit check, he
cooperates with your scheme. You

then sell $40,000
of product to the fictitious

company and ship
the product to your brother-inlaw’s

garage. Accounting
books the revenue in the

quarter, and you
have finally made quota. A week

into the next
quarter, your brother-in-law returns

the merchandise.

Meanwhile, unknown
to you, your company’s

ERP system is
scheduling production. The program

that creates the
production schedule reads the

sales from your
activities (and those of the other

salespeople) and
finds a sharp increase in product

demand.
Accordingly, it generates a schedule that

calls for
substantial production increases and

schedules workers
for the production runs. The

production system,
in turn, schedules the material

requirements with
the inventory application, which

increases raw
materials purchases to meet the

increased
production schedule.