Salespodder (Page 420)

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It's Butter & Sugar

Watching my fave Newsnight show last night I was reminded of once getting quite frustrated with one particular prospect. They were putting plans in place that should have included my then peddled service, yet tried to cobble together a solution, mistakenly thinking they could do what I offered themselves. This

Note the 3 costs

A talking head from UK insurance giant Norwich Union (trying to rename itself Aviva at present) was on Channel4 News explaining why 4,000 jobs were being axed – despite making profits in the first half-year of a whopping £1.7bn. Apparently Indian call centres are the way forward because of

Sales Promotion Insanity

Met an interesting chap today called Nigel who ran a company with a highly lucrative future I’m sure. His main excitement (quite rightly) came from the ability to got people away from the “evil” of Outlook, and instead, actually be able to know what is in all their emails,

Seffers Shine

A winner of a guy I know, hailing originally from PE in South Africa has a happy sales history and, having started one new business of his own, yearns to do it again within the next three years. His current role sees him managing resellers for his London-based software products

eAuction Idiocy

Internet Auctions have been bubbling under for a few years, creeping towards ever-greater credibility, mainly due to incredible PR coups such as the European 3G mobile phone licences and their mega-billion windfalls. It has to be said that such affection can surely nowadays only exist for those that haven’t

What Makes A Good Sales Deal?

Going through the tedium of sorting out my business’s quarterly sales tax returns, before sending them off to the guys I outsource the collation too, is not an ideal way to spend probably the last sunny Saturday morning of the year in England. Normally I’d bang on some

Air-Freshener Wars

Anti-biscuit dunking is a crusade against any type of bad selling. This pre-dominantly means lazy, arrogant or downright stupid tactics. Here, unusually, is one example I came across today that, although I knew was wrong (and most definitely not to be recommended) I thought was well-worth mentioning so others avoid

Who can sell?

I crossed paths with a chap who’s company I enjoyed a few years back called Tom Hannon. He was the MD (having been promoted from Sales Director no less, that rare, but heartwarming scenario for us mere reps) of a large British-founded erp software vendor (the financials, order processing

Insanity Defined

Was reminded of a top bloke yesterday. Dennis Brown, sadly no longer with us, was a larger-than-life natural born salesman, who started his career selling towels on Mancunian market stalls before setting up a highly successful chain of baby goods stores. The flagship one I believe remains in the hands

Dragons going Forth

The 4th of the current series of my fave show (Dragons Den [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/programmes/?id=dragons_den] on its 3rd series in England) had its usual collection of lunatic ideas, near-misses and funding secured. Here are the relevant sales-y pieces: * when someone mentions money, a