salespodder

salespodder

http://salespodder.com

Loving "the James Bond stuff"

Been doing quite a bit of repping recently, and in an oil industry software supplier, heard a heart-warning tale of how ‘service’ personnel were contributing to sales lead generation. These technical guys were in and out of customers all the time, yet their golden knowledge wasn’t being leveraged properly.

Dragons Fall On Den’s Sword

I’ve always got off on ‘pop idol for start-ups’ showDragons’ Den [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/]. And Wednesday, with the new series about to kick-off, my heroes are exposed as muppets. My disenchantment, which means I’m now ambivalent to the whole show, stems from knowledge of ‘one

Why bother with crm?

Met a fella who ran operations for one of two national regions within a huge £80m turnover motor parts distributor just now called Jack, or as the guys in the telesales room called him, ‘Jacko’. They’ve been going for donkey’s years, experienced decent growth, and a sea-change in

The Sundown Rule

Introduced ourselves to a new manager at one of my customers today. He’d served food/drink retailers all his lengthy career by the sounds of it. Having recently joined his new employers (supplying drink dispense kit to restaurants/bars) he ran me through a presentation just delivered on his

Avoiding Jonny's Regret Zone

I was fortunate enough to cadge a ticket to Twickenham on Saturday. First weekend of the Six Nations rugby, and could England put three years of misery behind them with the return of Wonderkid Jonny Wilkinson. Luckily the answer was a resounding ‘yes’! And it was a pleasure to see

Avoiding Religion And Politics

Far more years ago than I care to remember, I was on the conveyer belt of non-state schooling which drummed into me on a daily basis that not going to university meant that you were a total loser, destined to amount to precious little in life. One such teacher espousing

Blue Sheet Processes

When I was a wee lad, I was on a selling course with a load of experienced software reps. The trainer asked the usual ‘what do you hope to get out of this course’ intro. One person said ‘to learn something like the ICL Blue Sheet selling process’. ICL were

Optimum Length of Tenure?

Had a thoroughly enjoyable catch-up with an old pal of mine called Anthony (wierdly Tony to his other friends!) visiting London that currently works on retail merchandising in Kuwait. Apart from insisting we had to go for a meal featuring pork (absent from Kuwaiti shelves for the usually irrational religious

Chinese Pitching Dominance

Here’s a prediction from soothsayer salespodder; the Chinese will win big in business. I bet you’re amazed at my foresight, right?! You’ll probably know I’m one of the loyal Newsnight [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm] fanbase, and they regularly run

When you don't care about customers

More rummaging through old papers over my New Year break and I came across a reply to a complaint letter I received 12 September 2002 from PCWorld owners Dixons Stores Group. The background is that I (at that time) bought all my firm’s computer gear from their stores. I