academy

Without going into the scientific detail here, one famous persuasion technique involves asking someone whom you suspect to be disinclined to you and your views for a favour. The psychology is that when they acquiesce, they mysteriously switch to inclination towards you. I was reminded of a sibling of this

I enjoyed the warm glow that came with seeing a non-salesperson successfully make some cold calls the other day. And what a pleasure it was. Admittedly the calls weren’t icily arctic, but work was still needed to get over the line to fix up the requisite face-to-face meets. It

Despite how fond reps are of swapping war stories, recounting outrageous one-liners that prompt shaky hands wavering with a dripping pen to finally scrawl on the dotted line, the winners all realise that Closing is a Process. Where lack of appreciation of this can be most starkly highlighted is what

Your deadline is Friday. It’s the end of the month, quarter, year. Everything is in place. You’ve been promised the deal, signatures, purchase order, deposit. Zero hour looms and Bang. One small thing is amiss. The person who can fix it is back in on Monday. What’s

I was judging presentations as part of a sales training exercise for a client when the first team up ended with a close routine suggesting the prospect be flown around the world to visit as a reference an undeniably aspirational location. The three following teams picked up on this and

Whenever you first move into the seemingly murky world of solution selling, someone usually takes you to one side and suggests that the fog of war can be lifted by “mapping the process”. With specific regard to sign-off procedures, I had a reminder of this when recently helping out on