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Taming Hells Angels

I recently read a tale of management lessons learned by someone in the blogosphere. One of them was a cracker. If you’ve just taken over a salesteam or are shaping one, then here’s a tactic that may just dispel damaging antagonism. The story went that our hero was

How To Frame A Conversation

The sales-savvy CEO of a £60m business shared with me this little nugget recently. He described a piece of consultancy he’d had a few years back which he liked. It offers a framework for speaking to a senior person (or C-level Exec, as today’s jargon goes). it gives

Truly Meaning Sorry

I was talking the other day with the head of an Account Management unit. He explained the difficulties thrown up by having to handle the inevitable glitches of service delivery that crop up whilst you are trying to sell the next deal in. As can often be the bizarre way,

Chief Contrarian

I was reminded of the Candle Problem when blogging on Marshmallow Selling [http://salespodder.com/marshmallow-selling/] recently. As often happens, the concept appeared to me from another source soon after. In Management Today, I read an insightfulheadline [http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/features/1055772/dont-believe-it-financial-incentives-boost-performance/] ; > Don’t you believe

Cold Calling Regimes

What is the one part of selling that most sets apart management from reps? It’s got to be cold calling. You can run deeper than this too. Think less of call centre style measurement of how much time is spent on outgoing dials, rather being forced to pick out

Fresh Phoning

There are all sorts of synonyms for cold calling. Appointment making, canvassing, prospecting, smoke-stacking. There’s just four. The understanding though, is universal. Your approach is unsolicited, unexpected and probably unwelcome. Like many a pseudonym, alternate names are meant to make a dish more palatable. They are euphemisms. Cold calling

Sequoia Capital Sustainability

[http://www.sequoiacap.com] There can be few more fabled venture capitalists than this crew. Check their CrunchBase [http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/sequoia-capital] and Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Capital] profiles for evidence. As of now, their assertion estimating that “14% of the NASDAQ’s value is

The Stall Objection

Before Christmas I was privy to a recruitment interview. In the words of one candidate, here’s a final role play exchange. > Objection: Can we think about it for a month and let you know early in the New Year? Response: At the start of the year, companies put

Innovators Provoke

When Steve Jobs died recently, I recalled what was apparently one of his favourite quotes from Henry Ford. It seems to sum up how he felt about market research; if I asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse. Serial industry disrupter James Dyson was

Colour Blocks

[http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/galleries/TMG8848046/1/Whats-the-colour-of-fashion.html] Here’s a link as it appeared in The Telegraph the other day which caught my eye. If you click through, it seems plenty of haute couture names associate themselves with a specific colour. I was particularly taken with the