The 1/3-1/3-1/3 rule is defined as a formula that is used by many professional service firms – legal, accounting, etc. to give structure and incentive opportunities for their professional staff.

For many companies in the field of management consulting, the reward system mimics this well established and proven compensation program.

Beyond what happens within the management consulting firm is what firms do when outsiders – affiliates or sales professionals bring in new business. In my research on this topic, compensation varies from a straight “finder’s fee/commission” to a percentage of the project on a on-going basis. Inbetween is any number of permutations and combinations.

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One of the first things that sales and company executives ask us when we meet them is; “We need to grow our sales, what can you do for us?” To that we always respond, “If you’d share with us some of the processes that you have in place now for the sales team to follow – we can then take a look at them and see if there might be a way that we can help.”

What we’ve found is that most of the time the issue is always the same: There simply isn’t a process in place for us to look at – period. The salespeople almost always seem to be autonomous from the rest of the company. There are well thought out processes in place for finance, personnel and administration – but not for sales. When we ask the question of why the building of a business development process for the salespeople seemed to be pushed to the wayside, we almost always got the same response:

“It’s a huge undertaking and I know I should (Don’t you just love that word should?) be doing something – but where would I start?”

There I was in the corner talking to a lawyer “Here’s one of my cards” I said, “Why don’t I call you and we’ll set up a time to talk”. “Is Tuesday at 2 or Wednesday at 11 better for you?” I pushed.

“No thanks, we’re all set” she said and walked away just as fast as she could – I’ve actually seen running backs in the NFL run slower than her.

This happened countless times to me over and over again that night. Something had to be wrong. I knew salespeople who got referrals from people that they met at networking events. That’s what I was told to do – keep asking, go for the appointment, be persistent, blah, blah, blah. Plain and simple – I was getting lots of enemies but not a lot of business with this approach.

I decided to ask some of my friends who also attended many of the same events that I attended – they obviously must be successful because they keep coming. I was amazed at what the painful truth was – they weren’t any more successful than I was. One of them actually told me he went because of the great chicken wings that they always had. I said to myself no wonder he has a job at Home Depot on the weekends (he doesn’t do it because he likes tools – I’ve never even seen him pick up a screwdriver!) to subsidize his unsuccessful sales career

No one that I know of will disagree with me when I say that it is new sources of profitable revenue that fuels a company’s ability to grow and prosper. For many business executives, revenue only comes as a byproduct of sales pros delivering profitable business in large volume sufficient to generate a healthy bottom line profit. It is this “bottom line profit” that is the energy source which grows a healthy businesses.

It is not only volume that counts. It is profitability of the business delivered.

Anything else…? Every morning, as I stand in line (with way too many other people by the way) for a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts – I hear it over and over again: “Anything else?” asks the woman behind the counter in her somewhat broken English. Another customer, another “Anything else?” as she’s ringing [...]