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Active Listening

I first came across the concept of Active Listening [http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm] back in the mid-90s. A sales manager led training session raised the question of its definition. I stepped up to successfully provide one. To me, it was always about gently summarising what you’d

Top 5 Toronto Presentation Mistakes

In the dung-filled field of abundant presentation skill insight on the web, here’s a rare blossoming rose. It comes from Canadian @jessedee [http://twitter.com/JESSEDEE]. His website is well worth a visit, in particular to view his slideshared You Suck At Powerpoint – 5 Shocking Design Mistakes You Need

Great Run Feats

Extreme athlete (and fantastic eco-warrior)Braam Malherbe [www.braammalherbe.com] recently ran 4,218km along the Great Wall of China. It took 98 days, at an average of 43km a day. It was the latest in a long list of fund-raising efforts and climate and inequality awareness projects. Also apparently

Chief Exec Involvement

The Miller-Heiman solution selling mailing list received an invite to participate in their annual best-practice survey last week. They teasingly included their favourite finding from last year’s [http://www.slideshare.net/alinutley/miller-heiman-sales-best-practice]. Only 7% of companies qualified inside their definition of “world-class”. I realise that you could cloud

Where Do We Go From Here?

I recently saw the moving quest of father John Kerr who’s son Paul was killed in 1992 by a drink-drive criminal, seeking to get the hard-hitting graphic adverts on mainland television that in Northern Ireland have apparently saved 15,000 lives. He was off to see the Minister, confident

My 1000th Blog Post!

The warm glow of accomplishment. In a little under five years I’ve blogged 1,000 times. One thousand posts. All from my experiences in the real world of sales and nuggets picked up through life in general. With the allied aim of showing how salespeople should be running the

Tom Peters 111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts On Selling

An entertaining management theorist, I first came across Tom Peters’ works with the seminal 1982 co-authored In Search Of Excellence. It sought to document America’s best companies and reveal their secrets. Don’t necessarily let detractor mocking that they all went down the pan soon after cloud judgement. The

Size Assessors & Deal Finders

Wonder how the largest of businesses approach their sales funnel building at the moment? I found out interesting facts about the IT Services division of HP, effectively EDS as-was, and their strive this year to secure private sector mega-deals totalling a couple of billion. Clearly, there’s a relatively small

Alternative Slide Ideas From A Green Presentation

I helped a marketing expert fine tune a presentation recently. The pitch sought to build on sustainability issues. Leaving aside the structural and strategic advice (for instance they’d developed 82 slides in total planning to show no more than 20 in any one sitting which I suggested may still

8 Word Mission

A recent HBR blog post underlines the importance of ‘message’ brevity. Anchored in strategic management, The Eight-Word Mission Statement [http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2010/10/the_eight-word_mission_stateme.html] has wonderful connotations for the salesperson. In the same way as it’s vital a company gets across