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salespodder

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Neil Rackham, Spin Selling

Fads and buzzwords can come and go, yet can you think of another concept that has spread so widely throughout selling in the last two decades? A sales trainer told me that this seminal 1988 guide is the biggest shifting business book that its publisher, McGraw-Hill, ever had. Ask any

Elite Team Management

There’s a Global Sport Summit that this year is in London. Sport Coaches from around the world gather to swap ideas, and three major England coaches were caught by the BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/8322759.stm] discussing how to get the best out of

Quote or Early Invoice?

I just saw a document presented to someone in the hope of gaining an order. It was one single sheet of paper and featured, rather prominently, a figure in the region of $75,000. It included payment terms, bank details for electronic funds transfer, and seven ‘product lines’, none with

Hyperactive Prospects

In a doctor’s waiting room the other day I flicked through a pamphlet with tips to deal with ADHD children [http://www.homethroughhomework.co.za/tips.html]. Quite bizarrely I found most of them offered highly applicable tactics when faced with a difficult prospect – tricky in the sense of

Beating The Sales Bully

I’ve unhappily borne witness to bosses that are bullies. Pressure cooker sales environments can cause the unacceptable to appear mundane. Yet it needn’t become pervasive. When I’ve seen sales management resort to bullying tactics it’s difficult to rein it in. Especially when the protagonist is answerable

Infidelity Alerts

Over a round of toast laden with wonderful organic honey, my morning tea break led me to this delightfully paranoid article in the Times exposing 10 tips for spotting an unfaithful partner [http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article6875980.ece] . I instantly visualised the parallels

The Black Swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book has the deliciously sounding subtitle of The Impact Of The Highly Improbable. For much of its first two-thirds, it fairly races along, making even the casual reader consider that they can indeed understand ‘philosophy’. You cannot fail but to be impressed by his constant insistence

Choice Of Two

A crew of us were enjoying breakfast opposite the building site that feels worryingly incomplete at Cape Town’s world cup venue, as the 3½ yr-old among us happily turned our table into a race-track for his toy car. When presented with menu options, the toddler seemed restless. Fortunately it

How Distinctive Is Your Differentiator?

There’s an event on Thursday in Cape Town aimed at creating a community for wannabe tech start-ups, the name of which gives you the gist; Silicon Cape [http://www.siliconcape.com/]. Explaining the concept to me, one of the attendees gave an interesting example of a previous attempt to

Monty's Insight

I caught a chastening documentary on how the Allies managed to prolong the war in Europe and needlessly increase the pyre of bodies, due to internal strife, egos and mistakes of the commanders towards the end of 1944. In a narrative where no leader escapes blame, here’s a quote