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Stand-Up To Meeting Madness

What’s the biggest waste of a rep’s time? Well, coming second of course, but post-deal fire-fighting and spurious meetings run this close. I mention this as I had a nightmare journey to Cambridge from London. A plastic bag wrapped around a power-line and all hell broke loose on

In-house tweaking reality

Two conversations this past week re-affirm what a nightmare sales systems become when an internal, technical resource wields more power about them than they deserve. The first features a sales trainer that’s been supplying mind-mapping software to a client of his for a couple of years for sales-idea generation

Discount on 2 Ferraris?

Met a thoroughly decent chap I’ve known on and off for a couple of years yesterday (Jeff) at the rather plush IoD building just off London’s Trafalgar Sq. He works as a ‘sales practitioner’, which to him means rather than being a sales-cum-training ‘consultant’, he actually gets on

The British Disease

I often say that if you can sell in the UK, you can sell anywhere. As a bunch, there are precious few dynamos around these islands, and the ones we’re lucky to produce tend to fly off and settle in far away climes. Nowhere is this more stark than

Lynch "Lap-Top Larries"

It happens all too rarely, I bumped into a pal at a prospect yesterday. Lovely to catch up, and it meant we cut straight to the chase. He described the company as an “awesome commodity distribution operation”. They’d just re-structured their salesteam, and one new charge is called Adam.

Red Arrow Focus; aka, squadron leader analysis

One of my valued customers runs a reseller event every year. At each one an ‘inspirational’ speaker is duly booked. This year’s was so good, most of the audience left the room wanting to join up. He was a squadron leader with the Air Force’s elite flying display

Does anyone use crm???

Another day, another prospect, another first meeting and yet another guy saying they’ll not bother again with crm. This time it was with the MD (and notional head of sales) of a trendy commercial lighting operation. Four years ago they came to the UK from Denmark with one salesrep.

Immediately State Uniques

Nothing new to those into their marketing ideas and all things ‘usp’, getting across what is unique is critical in the very first few seconds you speak to someone according to Richard Farleigh [http://www.farleigh.com], he of Dragons’ Den fame and “prolific investor” in UK small/start-up firms.

Persuading Kids To Eat Proper Food

There’s a ton of press in England right now about our epidemic of obese children. They’re all spending too much time on the internet, playing computer games, doing zilch exercise, and eating chips, pizza and sweets. What’s this got to do with my sales-help crusade? Well, an

It's Never All Or Nothing

I’m a huge advocate of spreading good news. Many sales teams get bogged down in mires of negativity, argument and insubordination. Surely a better place to be is where everyone is aligned to similar initiatives, and focus on joined-up accomplishment. Lamentably, this is rarely the case. One guy (a