salespodder

salespodder

http://salespodder.com

Project Implementation Memorandum

This grandiose title relates to a doc appreciated by a particular business funder. I get the impression it is for endeavours that have gone past the ‘prototype’ stage, yet are still to fully understand a comprehensive business plan. After a meeting with them recently, they kindly provided a checklist of

Set The Standard

I learned through a TV interview that Steve Ross, the American head-hunted to turnaround retail chain Edcon [http://www.edcon.co.za/default.aspx], has managed to more than double the size of the business and return it to healthy profits. Consequently, he’s considered somewhat a leadership guru in

Single Meeting Syndrome

Despite how fond reps are of swapping war stories, recounting outrageous one-liners that prompt shaky hands wavering with a dripping pen to finally scrawl on the dotted line, the winners all realise that Closing is a Process. Where lack of appreciation of this can be most starkly highlighted is what

Cutting The Ribbon

> “When [the CEO] is standing up there and cutting the ribbon what we need to have made sure is…” This was a joyous phrase I heard in a post-sale project management meeting I was involved with the other day. There were two elements to this that impressed me: 1.

What's Changed

One terrific way of opening a meeting, whether during a first-time campaign or as part of an account management process, is to start off by asking “what’s changed” since you last got together. Yet the other day I was in a meeting where our last get-together was only the

Darwinian Difficulty

There’s all sorts of wonderfully produced BBC documentaries celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of his Origin of the Species publication. One such programme focused on what Darwin did not know at the time, and pondered whether it added or subtracted from his proposition. One base

Brad Sugar's 5 Ways

Flicking through the Entrepreneur mag [http://www.entrepreneur.com/], I came across a fella peddling his ownfail-safe system [http://www.bradsugars.com/page.php?page=5ways]on how business owners can generate crucial extra profit. It’s not without merit, and reminded me of the simplistic approaches sales managers like

Tactical Surprise

Over the past few days, Afghanistan dominated rolling news. Initially it was the awesome exploits of its fledgling cricket side qualifying for the World 20/20 Cup in the Windies in April (although, ICC take note, what we need is a 20/20 series akin to the IRB Rugby 7s

Concept Doc

Many, many solution salespeople I met get frustrated by what they perceive as unappreciated effort. Spending hefty chunks of time crafting proposal-style documents often goes unrewarded when the pdf emailed over does not get read. Where it even exists (which is in a surprisingly small amount of cases) standardised documentation

Another Golden Rule

I was involved in one of those informal, first-meet handshake, style introductions over a bottle of excellent red the other day with a chap that ran a firm specialising in writing business plans on behalf of prospective corporate funders. He thought that there was an unhealthy attitude prevalent among the