Salespodder (Page 400)

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Winning Major Accounts

Memories from a conversation with an MD of a datacomms type operation just now, are fresh with talk of Selling methodologies. These guys have an American corporate HQ that have got them to spend money on Miller-Heiman’s strategic selling. Part of the output included the famous ‘blue sheet’, which

Informal Requirements Analysis

Here’s an awesome application of a solution selling technique that one of my young coders hit me with the other day. And what a pleasure it was to hear. Alex wanted to know more about a particular app we’re developing internally to help productivity benefit from web 2.

First Meeting Outline

Several templates are knocking about for how to conduct a first meeting in B2B solution sales. I’ve always pretty much stuck to the one I first got taught way back in the day by two guys within 3 months of each other. I was amazed at the time that

More Compliance Trauma

Someone showed me how they use Oracle’s Sales Online the other day. Or more accurately, why they don’t bother with it. Part of a $500m technology-related business, founded in Chicago back in 55, all their global reps are expected to use the system. Yet none do. Whenever the

Door To Door Knock Encounter

Well, there I was sitting at a desk near the front door of my Cape Town office, safely away from the Winter cold and rain talking away about a customer project, when in walked a women in a beret, with a huge black cotton holdall slung over her shoulder. Unused

Another Angle On 'No'

Sitting in yet another reception a Monday or two ago, I thumbed through the FT. An article about Business schools teaching by example [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/47515d92-0738-11dc-93e1-000b5df10621.html] naturally caught my eye. My personal exposure to the PR machine that is the Association of MBAs is many

Acknowledge Sales Backward Planning Realities

As the name implies, this technique takes as its starting point where you want to go, and works backwards from it to pinpoint what needs to happen to get there. A client of mine recently paid an external consultancy to work theirs out for them and make a plan. Without

Presentation Pauses & Structure

How many presentation skills training courses have you been on? It’s possibly the most common kind of sales-y training non-reps go on. There’s positively oodles of tips around the web, and to add to that surfeit, here’s three hints I took when hearing an explanation of just

Beating "chindia" Prices

I guess this must be happening to several salesreps, and is likely to gather pace. You’re supplying someone that all of a sudden, decides to take what you’ve been faithfully selling from a far flung land instead. One of my customers told me today about a famous story

Support, Don't Obstruct

Spent an engaging session with a newly appointed sales manager called Mark at a London prospect, who amongst many things, bemoaned why at his last place they mysteriously ripped out a bespoke system (despite it having universal rep approval) and replaced it with a Siebel one (which all the reps