Portfolio management - Picking up the pieces of a huge mess

This is an "ancient" situation that people who worked on companies that sell something faced all time. I was the professional services (consulting, presales, tech support, education) for Latin America inside a hugh software services related company. Because you describe I was direcly involved into a company transformation where three main "pilars" were involved into each proposal: finance, sale, professional services. A professional service representative worked with the sale representative in all related to demmand management and proposal management. In brief, that solved the issue.

Thanks for your response Sergio. I think that the challenge i will have is that i will have to look around me and use what i have: not more additional resource allowed. This means that I will have to convince Account Managers that they have to act like Project Managers in order to apply structure and coherant reporting.

You seem to be on the right track. Identify and analyze what is currently in the queue, keep/move as needed based on pre-determined criteria, re-prioritize, determine KPI's for reporting, determine processes and procedures for project management moving forward.

How many Account Managers are you overseeing? Do any of them have the ability and/or willingness to serve as PMs in some capacity? If so, you might be able to leverage them to help manage the other Account Managers to some degree. Any assistance they could provide would help you get things under control sooner.

Jonathan, to convince somebody to do something you have to act taking into account her/his objectives. Is like Newton Laws of Unversal Movement: to change something you have to put an action in place and you will receive a reaction. In my personal experience forget about to convince sales people to do what you stated. Is a complain? Not at all. Their focus is quit different than our focus. But I was trained into some sales methods that helped me. Take a look to "Solution Selling" or "SPINT Selling" selling method. It could help you. Is a method to work on each person "pain".