grapevine

I’ve unhappily borne witness to bosses that are bullies. Pressure cooker sales environments can cause the unacceptable to appear mundane. Yet it needn’t become pervasive. When I’ve seen sales management resort to bullying tactics it’s difficult to rein it in. Especially when the protagonist is answerable

Do you feel that objection handling as an art is one essential skill that few salespeople truly master?  As a cubrep, the process that got drummed into me involved five steps: Empathy, Explore, Confirm, Response, Action One of the reasons that I found it to work so well, is that

There’s very many situations that gain clearer expression with application of the good ol’ 2×2 matrix. When I delivered a day’s coaching on political mapping not long back, the assembled throng thought that the Product Market Grid was the earliest business example, yet a case could be

More BBC documentary action recently unfortunately featured a flagrant attempt to label John Madejski as an archetypal ‘money can’t buy happiness’ case study. As Britain’s 168th richest person when filming began (worth £325m) the film-maker was transparent in his efforts to show the glum side of extreme wealth.

Here’s a lovely 4-minute clip from one of those TED speakers, Richard St John [http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_success_is_a_continuous_journey.html]. Any salesperson that is struggling with scraping by when once they were unassailable will undoubtedly love this message. Similarly, anyone worried

Excellent insight via Selling Power [http://www.sellingpower.com/html_newsletter/article.asp?usr=SP3774485844&NLid=1&Layout_ID=916&ARTid=4066&nDate=July+15%2C+2009] about how to pursue typically hesitant prospects appearing unaware of the precise financial impacts of their current woes. According

Catching a snippet of BBC News covering his latest prime-time press conference of Wednesday night, their introduction included the ear-pricking phrase “the top salesman for the administration, the President himself”. Then the editor of the clip displayed impressive sales acumen by showing three healthcare reform related soundbites, each tellingly solution