Topic

grapevine

A collection of 649 issues

How Project Managers Think

It can often seem that to be a successful salesperson, you need to have immense project management skills. Especially in more complex deals, the way you need to bring people in and out and manage several different individual expectations and opinions can mark the deal-making difference. I mentioned this to

Think Like McKinsey's

Although I heard this second-hand (from a legal friend of mine that has a close pal working out of Atlanta in America for large business consultant McKinsey [http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/]) the message is remarkably succinct. My friend began his wisdom with the preface that everything he’s heard confirms

Tackling Tricky Client Re-engagement

One of my customers has a world-beating piece of mission critical software for a specific niche. As such they have a fiercely loyal user-base, with an industry-envied 85% of their sites being reference-able. As with all niche strategies, possible de-railing issues can crop up, like these three I’ve just

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

Cloudforce London

I’ve always wanted to admire salesforce.com crm. Yet I remain unconvinced that their flagship product helps salespeople in my b2b solution arena in the ways they suggest. My experience needs context. This is that traditional sales automation software is even worse. And that I firmly believe support of

4 Ingredients Or Less

Staying in a hotel on my travels around Blighty I happened across the slickest media operation by authors I can remember seeing in a long, long while. Two Aussie friends, busy Mums and cooking hobbyists, have unleashed a phenomenon in 4 Ingredients Or Less [http://www.4ingredients.com.au/]. As

Accomplishment Comes First

Always a fan of the peerless globetrotting people-explorer Alan Whicker [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5012349/Feature-Alan-Whickers-career-highlights.html] , in downtime I watched his personal career reprise. It was stunning to see his first 1963 ground-breaking film, The Solitary Billionaire. (Jean) Paul Getty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.

The Invisible Close

Whilst surfing on something completely unrelated, I came across the website of one of those coaching programmes seemingly so beloved by middle-America that focus on self-help and personal improvement in your chosen pursuit. What struck me as useful about Lisa Sasevich’s [http://www.theinvisibleclose.com/articles] angle was how

Make Choice Simple

I’ve blogged before about my occasionally tormenting ‘Choice Paradox’. I believe in two strands that at first glance may seem mutually exclusive. At the one possible pole, I believe you can generate more sales by always thinking up one more product offering, yet at the other potential extreme, I