Topic

academy

A collection of 125 issues

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.

A 2-Minute Talk

I was in a prospect’s reception yesterday suitably early and whilst waiting for my allotted hour, glanced through a paper on hand. I discovered a tale of how an author was put off performance for life after an unsavoury childhood experience. At school, he flunked a public speaking style

Why Wouldn't It Work?

I was reminded earlier today about a meeting I had with a brief IT chief at a FTSE100 company. The poor fella had the misfortune to arrive immedaitely prior to a tumultuous takeover so didn’t stay long. Anyway, I needed the requisite number of ‘signatures’ including his, so met

Implementation Hand-Holding

I was reminded recently of an all-too-often overlooked part of the sales cycle; implementation. How often do we cringe when hearing of ‘salesrep-sold-and-ran’ tales? Ink barely dry, commission already spent, and the customer left in the lurch as a new set of faces takes over part-petrified, part-clueless? The ‘spin’ exponents,

4-Phase El-Pitch

Occasionally I meander through the online broadsheet small business guides, and one such journey the other evening stumbled across an English perspective on the Elevator Pitch. First things first, it’s a Lift. Why use 4 syllables when just one alone is perfectly sufficient? Credit to The Times [http://business.

Remember The Business Case

Here’s a great line I got in an email from a customer. We were talking about how to create a better style of Proposal generation for a breakthrough new product of theirs. “…we can often win without a perfect [business] case. That said, a good case never lost a

The 'Any News Yet?' Call

First time around you often hear reps say “as requested, I’m calling back today, any news yet?” and take it from there. Although it must be said that this is a bit shoddy for a phone call premise, as the call should really be structured around some definitive next

Never Accept Beyond The Horizon

During February, one of my cold-callers ecstatically informed me of a new first meeting they’d nailed into the diary. When I enquired as to the date, it turned out to be for 2 June. My excitement and attention quickly diverted elsewhere. I then realised that I must explain myself

We're Now On Two Point Zero

One of my cold-callers ran into an obstacle when the person reached claimed they’d already met with us in the past. So, knowing all about us, they declined our kind offer of a meeting to became acquainted. It must be almost ten years since I last witnessed this objection

Pants On Fire

We had an objection handling workshop over brekkie this morning. And would you credit it, a new objection has landed! Well, of course that’s impossible, as there are never new objections. In fact, every single product can only ever come across a handful. And price is not an objection