Salespodder (Page 366)

More issues

How's Your Selling Storytelling?

I read an article in a strategic management mag [http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/18637] from a few years back with timeless resonance for salespeople. It discusses ten books that unmask story-telling as a definitively powerful tool in persuasion. It must have been a buzz-topic of the time, as

What's Around Your Edges?

I experienced a pleasant surprise the other night; excellent service in a London gastropub. Over the past few years, the usual antipodean supply of waitrons and bartenders has been supplanted by eastern Europeans who, whilst laudably keen, are suffering inevitable confusion from not fully understanding colloquial, real-time English and accompanying

Mid-Term Gesture

I met up with a friend having his pad renovated by an impressively diligent Polish team. He was chuffed that, as a freebie, they’d offer to do an extra day’s work to help him finish the final painting touch-ups. I wondered how this could be, and he shared

IT Project Attraction

Many solution sellers inhabit the world of IT sales. I was talking to a coder friend of mine (with a Masters degree [http://www.nyit.edu/] in his craft) about what’s currently going down in his world when buying such technology. He told me about a neat 3-part evaluation

Nuance Of Need

Ouch. The Beeb film can dramas that bomb. Coldplay can release a rubbish single. Phil Taylor can throw dodgy arrows. Apple can make a product no-one buys. Hey, even Obama can mis-read his autocue. So we all come a cropper every now and then, but even so, I was beside

Target The Core Group

Rummaging through old magazines, with a view to recycling and freeing up unnecessarily tied up space during a Bank Holiday weekend, a raft of Booz Allen Hamilton’s journals presented themselves. Always partial to a touch of strategic thinking, I was delighted when one article shed welcome light on a

What's On Your Dashboard?

I’ve always been a big fan of the dashboard approach. My first exposure to it was nearly twenty years ago now. I’d got the nod on a large deal for what today is called ERP, but back then was simply ‘financials and distribution’ software. As part of the

Wiki Wacky Wonky

Imagine this scenario. You meet someone involved in sales management. Their current gripe does indeed appear to render them unusually grumpy. They instituted a kind of wiki. The idea was that the sales people in the field would create and add to the collective knowledge of the team by sharing

Provocation-Based Selling

I’ve just come across a fascinating clash of viewpoints that, quite rightly, highlight how the slightest of nuance can make a huge difference to people. Despite having only seen what’s publicly posted, this exchange strikes me as of paramount importance to b2b vendors in the next 24 months

The Continually Questioning Contrarian

A quintessentially British media storm swelled around the latest terror plot arrests this week. To recap, the leading anti-terrorism policeman in the land inexplicably walked into Number 10 with a dossier on the next possible plot clearly visible to the close-by prying lenses. When blown up in resplendent digital glory,