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salespodder

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Are You A Sounding Board?

I caught a recent 70sec video from a Global Product Manager. The reason I clicked on the link was because because I’d been to where he’s based (IBM, Lexington) and he’s an MBA. Then, after saying the obvious – that he looks to financials to judge the success

Easy Lead Riches Mirage

I recently got spammed by an American email marketing outfit. One of their three main strands is described by their web spiel thus; > The days of batch and blast email marketing campaigns with low response rates are over. To convert raw inquiries into sales ready leads, modern marketers need

Harvard MBA B-Plan Judge Tips

I occasionally blog on the murky world of business plans for two main reasons. I often get paid to help write them so have live exposure to their vagaries and I think many a pitch or proposal (especially a brand new product one) can benefit from lessons learned in this

Big Red Button

One of my friends passed on his secret personal presentation ethos to me. The central strand upon which everything hangs is that he must hit big red buttons. He makes sure that before his slot he has identified every single irritation that the prospect suffers. (He feels people either buy

30-Day MBA Ridicule

I flicked through one of the upended tropical forests of delusional surface-scraping self-help guides the other day. 321 pages, 12 chapters, with everything you need to know for business success as based on an MBA syllabus. How much prose was devoted to selling do you think? One and a half

60 Seconds And Your Hired

Pre-dating the discovery of global financial corruption, a friend of mine landed a job in New York with Goldman Sachs. He told me that this 1994 book helped him snare it. [http://www.robinryan.com/] I borrowed it wondering if it held any sales tips. I’m pleased to report

Draw Your School

A friend of mine shared a fascinating experience from a former parents’ evening at his lad’s junior school. When the class reaches a certain stage, the teacher asks them to draw their school. Regardless of any interrogative questions from the floor, no further instructions are given. Each is simply

Media Elevator Pitches

London’s Liberal-leaning Guardian newspaper has an entertaining microsite where web startups promote their wares. Since the start of 2008 they’ve broadcast wannabe dotcom stars at the rate of around half-a-dozen a month, although this rate tailed off into 2011, with only three in the first Quarter. [http://www.

Sales Activity Shift

[http://saleschallenger.exbdblogs.com/2011/02/07/are-your-salespeople-spending-too-much-time-in-front-of-customers/] An American study of over 5,000 salespeople suggests that in just a few short quarters of the last decade, face-to-face selling time fell off a cliff. A 26% drop apparently. If these end-of-’09 stats were a week’s worth of

An Orchard Of Bad Apples

Shopfloor selling is in a terrible state. In fact, it’s so rare to find adequate, let alone impressive, retail sales skills that when you do, you put it down to a fluke of personal individual brilliance. In a glittering Apple store the other day, what kind of sales skill