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salespodder

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Purchasing Manager Frustration

A pal of mine used to be a buyer (I know, how could I…) and I was asking him his thoughts on what people might think in terms of a buying process for a product of mine. As we chatted, he revealed his pet hate with reps. He’d often

The Downside Torpedo

Over lunchtime earlier today I caught itinerant self-publicist and seemingly self-styled ‘entrepreneur’s entrepreneur’, Richard Branson, plugging his latest book on a radio show. And in these credit crunch selling-squeeze times, I was reminded of a wonderful piece of advice I was given at the start of my sales career

Thaw Spend Freeze

I suspect that virtually all of us are experiencing that the credit crunch is biting. I had a couple of cheekies after stumps with a pal of mine Thursday night who’s responsibilities include managing financial risk and reducing borrowing costs for one of the most well-known global luxury retail

Mystery Shopper Trap

A friend was telling me about his sales benchmarking sideline. He offers clients a full competitive audit of their sales process, right through from initial enquiry to cancellation/returns. He’d recently conducted some work in the vaguely entitled ‘virtual assistant’ space. 16 firms were contacted. Just 5 emailed a

Team Bonding Beyond Beers

The regular gag of lament among sales trainers is to often mock Sales Management’s widely held view that the best form of ‘team bonding’ is to take the reps out for a slap-up beano. If you’re in a team where this logic prevails, then perhaps you can take

Keeping Attention

Two separate experiences have reminded me of the difficulties that surround not just engaging an audience, but of actually maintaining their interest. In one paper this morning, a “communications consultant” trots advice [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4799417.ece] out for Gordon Brown. As one of the

Groundswell Selling

As part of my current product development, I bought a couple of books to feast on, rather than rely on web-based morsels to further my knowledge. One I picked up from an airport bookshelf had an intriguing title, “Groundswell, winning in a world transformed by social technologies” yet thoroughly uninspiring

Do You Share The Millionaire Secrets?

Americans. Is it true that the only people that love them are themselves? Despite their generally mystifying and atrocious self-help industry, I came across a promising ‘web channel’ called Big Ideas and a clip from Marci Shimoff. Tangentially related to selling I admit, she quotes research to illuminate the 5

Even Boffins Get It Wrong

Over the past week the physicists on the Franco-Swiss border have achieved remarkable global media coverage. The CERN labs, most famous it seems for giving us the internet, have just switched on their latest supergizmo. When I first heard of it, I’m pretty sure its raison d’etre was

Implementation Hand-Holding

I was reminded recently of an all-too-often overlooked part of the sales cycle; implementation. How often do we cringe when hearing of ‘salesrep-sold-and-ran’ tales? Ink barely dry, commission already spent, and the customer left in the lurch as a new set of faces takes over part-petrified, part-clueless? The ‘spin’ exponents,