Topic

grapevine

A collection of 656 issues

Testimonial Structure

[http://www.bcg.com] Consulting behemoth BCG offer up testimonials on their website. They are unfortunately shorn of any real punch or memorability. Nevertheless, the structure they employ piqued my interest. When I regale glowing references, I like to lather the full story on nice and thick. The crises, the

Roger's Thoughts

Here’s a gem of a webpage I came across quite by accident. I know salespeople like to add the occasional killer quote to their presentations, but where do you find such nuggets? Well, here’s a chap [http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/Thoughts.html] that’s been writing up

Brainsteering

[https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Seven_steps_to_better_brainstorming_2767] Salespeople don’t often get to brainstorm. Marketing like to think they have the monopoly on being creative, right? Whenever those in sales sit in a room for a couple of hours to come up with ideas, it is usually

Chocolat Box

No, that’s not a typo in this post’s title. I refer to high-end retailer Hotel Chocolat. I caught their co-founder on rolling news talking up trading conditions. No bumping along the bottom for him, he excitedly pitched his new stores, diversification and that graveyard for English shops, America.

Net Promoter Happiness

The net promoter [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter] score idea’s been around since the mid-Naughties. It’s simplicity is lovely of course. Ask your clients if they’d recommend you to a friend and if more give you above eight out of ten than mark six or

What To Discount?

I hate to discount. We’ve all been confronted by a spreadsheet with multiple options for pricing the components of your bid. When you tot up either what you want the client to take or their entire wishlist, it’s way over their budget or above what you know they’

Unify Simplify Amplify

Here’s a branding lesson [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663249/100k-of-free-branding-advice-in-just-three-words] from a New York expert in the field. It has resonance for salesteams trying to get everyone moving in the same direction. [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663249/100k-of-free-branding-advice-in-just-three-words] Self-explanatory in nature is of course a thing of beauty. In

How To Frame A Conversation

The sales-savvy CEO of a £60m business shared with me this little nugget recently. He described a piece of consultancy he’d had a few years back which he liked. It offers a framework for speaking to a senior person (or C-level Exec, as today’s jargon goes). it gives

Innovators Provoke

When Steve Jobs died recently, I recalled what was apparently one of his favourite quotes from Henry Ford. It seems to sum up how he felt about market research; if I asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse. Serial industry disrupter James Dyson was

Black Swan Stress Test

I read the book that introduced this phrase a couple of years [http://salespodder.com/the-black-swan/] back. So was intrigued to find an article from HBR in September 2011 (by Flyvbjerg & Budzier) evoking the concept in the context of (IT) project success. If you sell in the tech space,