Topic

academy

A collection of 124 issues

Effective Competitive Intelligence

There was an event I was unfortunately unable to attend that I recently received some collateral from afterwards. It was on a subject that interests me partly because I myself often get paid for providing a type of service in this arena to salesteams, namely competitive intel. My analysis on

Hard v Soft Targets

What a thoroughly enjoyable couple of drams I had with a friend the other night. Among his many skills, he’s a college lecturer. He was busily bemoaning the target culture in British education and aghast at how widely it misses the mark. He felt that the purpose of targets

Presentation Trinity

Enjoyed a few cheekies with a pal the other night, and before watching the awesomeness that is this years Champions League, he asked me what quick-fire tips I could give him for how to make an effective presentation. With only a blink’s worth of thinking time, and under 60secs

Ensuring Haggle Win-Win

Salespeople are notoriously inept negotiators. This isn’t a criticism at all. They are two entirely different disciplines. A bit like finding an actor that’s become a fine musician, or the other way around. It hardly ever happens. Apparently, we in the UK are shedding our centuries of reserve

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

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

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 Lost Art Of Oratory

The BBC’s fascinating 70-min documentary, Yes We Can! The Lost Art of Oratory [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7981471.stm] (first broadcast 05 April 09) provided several tips for those of us required to stand up in front of an audience and inspire them to act.

Grassing Dutch Auctions

Charming sushi in 32° Cape Town heat, with a pal that’s just set up on his own selling artificial turf. He asked me how to deal with a particular type of sales situation in 30secs as he raced off to spend the weekend among kite-surfers on the West Coast.