Fire Your Sales Team Today: Then Rehire Them as Sales Guides in Your New Revenue Department

In order to be truly remarkable and create the kind of company that gets people talking, you need to step outside of comfortable patterns and think about your business in new ways. Changing the way your company does business starts with a close look at the way you interact with your clients or customers. That means re-examining your sales and marketing approach.

Eric Keiles and Mike Lieberman present three "big ideas" that will help you think differently about your sales and marketing efforts, lead your company to success, and beat the pants off of the competition.

- Adapt to the dramatic shift in buyer behavior. As you probably know by now, the Internet has permanently changed the way people make purchasing decisions. Now that consumers have the power to research each purchasing decision online with the touch of a button, companies both large and small need to rethink their sales and marketing approach.

- Transition to a guided sales process. The new consumer does not want to be sold. Instead of selling or pushing your company's products and services to every lead, you need to retrain your sales force to act as consultants who take time to understand each prospective customer's pains, answer their questions, and guide them to the appropriate solution.

- Create a Revenue Department. For decades, companies of every size and across countless industries have separated their sales and marketing efforts into two distinct departments: one to drive customers to your door (marketing) and one to close the deal (sales). By combining your sales and marketing team members into a single, cohesive entity called The Revenue Department, you ensure that every member of the team works together to reach your company's overall goals.

Creating positive change within your business structure may seem difficult. Whatever you do, don't stand still. Change is necessary to move your business forward.

As Confucius said: Every long journey begins with a single step. But there's one thing Confucius left out: If you don't start taking those steps now, before long the competition will leave you behind.