Salespodder (Page 403)

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Deadlines, Not Guidelines

Here’s a wonderful phrase my Cape Town pal Paul passed on to me over the weekend. Ever bemoaned the lack of progress from a pre-sales helper-cum-techie, supposedly helping you with vital prospect prep? In my case, I was trying to work out how to rush-up a local supplier, who’

Overcome Initial Resistance

Rocked up at a place a few Monday morning’s ago and almost immediately qualified out. Not only was it little more than a trade counter selling tools, so not my target market at all, but the fella in charge, Frank, said that no appointment was in fact arranged, and

"Mooning" Competition?

Most of the sales teams I meet cite one specific competitor with whom they enjoy (or endure!) locking horns, where intense battles often focus on their opponent’s inferior product at cheaper cost stealing away business. Then travelling to Heathrow to catch a flight I picked up a deshevelled paper

Stumbling Over A Close

We all know closing should be a smooth process, one where we preferably ask for the order without there being any discernible change in conversation flow, and so that the prospect wasn’t even aware we closed them. Yet on Wednesday, I found myself in the middle of a couple

What's Good For The Goose Isn't Always Also Good For The Gander

One of my customers sells to accountants. A rep there frustratingly recounted to me how a paradox causes him much irritation. Bean counters tend to espouse diligent processes and talk of returns to their clients when assessing investment, yet when it came to his wares, they rarely applied such vigilence

Expansion Territory time?

Met a chap that’d been at their firm for twenty years, joining just three-months after establishment. In that time they’d experienced solid, steady performance, with the last three years seeing a new level of growth. Recent expansion was enjoyed in part due to two new reps ripping up

Avoid The Mumble Zone

Had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch in the first London sunshine of the Summer yesterday with the head of one of my customer’s sales teams. He’d a process of “CCRs” (client contact reports) which unsurprisingly the reps never filled out. He knew that his post-sales Services team became party

When do you Negotiate on Price?

This was a question posed on a sales & marketing forum I wandered into the other day. I had a few moments, so typed an answer away to help the fella, called Bjorn. I was delighted when he later awarded my experience as “best answer”. Thanks fella! Here it is:

Track Your Propositions

Had one of those delicious moments of dawning earlier today. Many sales teams I meet are disillusioned with their ‘crm’, to the point of jettisoning the whole shabang. In their place, quasi-random spreadsheets or word process docs float around. One omnipresent reason for such abandonment, is that reps simply hardly

English 'Torygraph' Broadsheet Tips

Well, serendipity is a wonderful thing. There I was in my spare time, googling for some stuff on ‘peak limiting’ (it’s a music production thang) and amazingly I came across a wealth of sales intel from a bloke called Mike Southon [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?