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salespodder

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Expose Bait and Switch

A major obstacle solution sellers face is not simply the cheaper quote, but one where a competing bid claims to offer exactly the same as you, but for way less money. In such cases, should you be able to justify that your price premium alone unlocks the unique capabilities essential

Recession Schmecession

At a recent out-of-hours event, the second slide one presenter showed betrayed his allegiance to the type of networking organisation only truly embraced inside America. He trumpeted their current slogan, that you can even buy on a dollar-a-throw pin badge [http://store.bni.com/p-202-i-refuse-to-participate-in-a-recession-button.aspx]; “I Refuse to Participate

Lessons Learned Exercises

The head of the army, Sir Richard Dannatt, announced his 3-year tenure will end in August. During the round of subsequent media appearances, I caught that he’d just “kicked off” a “lessons learned exercise” of the operation in southern Iraq. This begins now as one had already been done

Professional Services Marketing

I attended a presentation the other evening billed as how to fight your way through the credit crunch recession using lessons from when lawyers and accountants gain more clients. Whilst it failed to deliver anything earth-shatteringly new or unique on this score (but then perhaps merely confirming ‘basics’ was the

Textbook Buying A Car

All salespeople are lousy buyers. We are generally easily sold, get distracted by the sales technique of the vendor and tend to be unable to apply the mirror of the skills that make us successful sellers. I came across a delightful five-minute snapshot of how you should go about buying

Commitment Tax

A universal way to understand someone’s continuing commitment to you is to ask them for yet more money. Many companies try to tie-in customers (and lock-out competitors) by setting up programmes that add extra value, typically for a small ‘service’ charge for membership. The software trade somehow got away

Focus On Impact Of Change

Disciples of Solution Selling embrace the recognition of ‘change’ and the importance attached to determining how such changes can affect their sales campaign. After the latest in a long and unfortunately never-ending stream of stolen elections in territories with a false veneer of true democracy, this time in Iran, I

Attention Scarcity

Here’s a thought-provoking concept I read from a Frenchman’s blog, Macro Principles [http://www.macroprinciples.com/2009/04/user-adoption-risks-are-growing-rapidly-for-it-projects/] , quoting Herbert Simon: > What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a

Can You Cut A Sliver?

I was reminded just now of a thoroughly decent chap called Dylan. I met him around twenty years ago whilst he was doing a PhD on how small businesses make strategic decisions. He is now a leading academic [http://dylanje.blogspot.com/] with specialisations including how such small enterprises become

Standing On The Shoulders Of CEO Expertise

I’ve spent time lately helping salespeople understand the kinds of topic that CEO-style people want to hear, specific to when they permit a prospective rep to sit before them for five minutes, and do not ‘appear’ directly involved in your decision process. I was reminded of a time fifteen