grapevine

There’s an annual British Science Festival on at the moment. It slyly never fails to generate endless hours of material for afternoon radio phone-ins. One of this year’s headlines [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/british-science-festival-2010] though happily had some decent meat to it from a sales perspective.

One of the two biggest wastes of a new business salesperson’s time is post-signature firefighting. Similarly Account Managers hate having to be the frontman for delivery problem apologies. Zappos are an American-only billion dollar shoe etailer. Founded in 99 they are, according to the Bloomberg Venture show I saw

Mix the science of why people buy with the evangelic vigour of television reps and you get the optimum behavioural economic infomercial pitch. I know this via the FT’s deliciously irreverent Undercover Economist’s suggestion [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/71796594-a9a4-11df-a6f2-00144feabdc0.html] of a perfect pitch based

As you’ll gather from my blogsite straps, a wish I hold dear is for more sales people to become chief execs.  Flicking through an old back-up drive from 2003, I discovered a document from a thoroughly engaging chap I knew back then called Paul Morris.  In 2004/5 I

I’ve blogged about choice architecture and the joys of nudging before (in 2008 [http://salespodder.com/are-you-a-true-choice-architect/] & 2009 [http://salespodder.com/selling-and-the-prevention-paradox/]). For 2010’s reflection I’ve just come across four delicious further examples from a Brand Republic blogger [http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/dtb/archive/2010/05/

Here’s a steer from a recent Selling Power article. The writer contends that the following five traits [http://www.sellingpower.com/content/article.php?nr=1&a=3] identify a world class selling operation. How do you fare on these? > Buyer Enablement – your focus is client goals rather than

How not to pitch. I watched an American called Eric Daniels [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/eric-daniels] on newsbites yesterday. He had reason to be cheerful. The banking giant he currently runs was bailed out by the UK Government to the tune of £20bn. A welcome change in fortune

Doing the rounds on London promo-telly sofas over the previous weekend was Paul McKenna (wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McKenna] & own site [www.paulmckenna.com/]). Regular readers of my blogs will note that whilst I am fervently not in the camp of self-help guru sycophancy, I am however fascinated