Salespodder

Latest — 23 Sep 2026

Colourful Story Avoids Negotiation

Knowing the story of the items you are purchasing can boost buyer interest. [antiques trader Gordon Kennedy] has six dozen handcrafted Turkish pots with an unusual rustic glaze. He explains how the secrets of this glaze have been passed down six generations of the same family and can show buyers

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If You Read LLM as LBM

Prompt engineering has gone quiet, hey. Understandable, given the ludicrous salaries once offered to self-proclaimed AI bot whisperers. Yet the skill is now strangely overlooked, even though bot output has improved dramatically and the quality of the question still drives the quality of the answer. Anyone who lives by RIRO

The Pokemon Principle

I learn by chance that it's the thirtieth anniversary for Pokemon cards. Whatever they are. Although I do remember the absolute clamour among grown-ups around fifteen years ago when Virtual Reality seemed the future. As those that ought seemingly know better got consumed with Pokémon GO through their

Setting Career Direction

I read a piece knocking on my open door recently suggesting the typical approach to job application details were tired and no longer apt. Albeit undercut through insistence on using 'young people' as sanitised labelling. Lazy, patronising institution-speak othering that ignores actual differences between any youngsters within quite

In the Market for a Big Idea?

Amid the perma-swirl of structural changes, product/market realignments and new brooms sweeping in, my most typical commission is New Product Rescue. Most scenarios share a foundation of all-things-to-all-buyers. Yet especially with genuinely 'new' wares, not all buyers are created equal. For instance, I nearly always illuminate with

Rebooting Bid After Air Traffic Control Meltdown

This week saw yet more chaos from UK airspace shutdown. Third time in three years. All seemingly caused by 'flight processing' issues. This latest calamity, directly affecting 2,100 flights over two days, reportedly caused by a local military aircraft inputting 'spurious' flight data. Eerily similar

Death of a GTMman

This title above is possibly my favourite comment of 635 replies I scrolled through on a tweet bemoaning the latest generational attempt to rebrand the Sales dept. Just like Arthur Miller's iconic Willy Loman, I've lived through a fair few of such revamps in my selling

California Roll Switcheroo Selling Lesson

The California roll is an excellent example of encouraging people to try something radically new. In 1970s America, sushi wasn't very popular. It just felt too alien - seaweed was something the kids played with on a beach, not a food stuff. So trying to get people to

The Quick Call Trap

It's generally a bad sign when people use the adjective "quick" to describe something they want you to do. Have a "quick call" for example. It means it will be unpleasant and thus not lasting long is a feature. — Paul Graham (@paulg) August 22,

Slot Grope Protection

A couple of fellow sellers running significant shows of their own alerted me to the ballooning of this latest most unsavoury digital direct mail tactic. A wholly unsolicited calendar invite appears in your schedule. Blocking off a specific, freshly allotted slot. The event titled with brazenly cold-call bombast. You cancel