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grapevine

A collection of 657 issues

Sales Micro-Marketing

My blog post yesterday, featuring the uncanny realisation of how the top performing reps tend to run their own mini “campaigns”, made me hunt through some old files. This was because couple of years ago I worked closely with a young dynamic technology business which, despite all its winning new

Incumbent Pitch Focus

Psephology may be a word only used in secret by fans of Newsnight, yet its pursuit may have thrown out an essential tip for those of us whom, as incumbent suppliers, are forced to enter into a beauty pageant to secure the next contract. Clients will hold these for a

Reduce To Produce

This is the title of a live initiative I’ve come across within engineering giant BAe. They’ve apparently realised that they can save money bycannibalising the unused output, stores and resource of slow-moving or semi-hidden projects to make huge savings elsewhere. One such example of which I learned included

Write It Down

Chalk another one up for the planning brigade. Michelle Mone, who founded what is apparently now, just over a dozen years later, Britain’s largest luxury lingerie brand in Ultimo, was quizzed on the Beeb as to how she got started. The story is a familiar entrepreneurial one. Left school

Defend Like Lawyers

Now that Bankers have placed themselves at the top of the ‘most hated profession’ tree, lawyers have slipped down a notch or two. Let’s not completely forget about them though. I have a couple of friends that work in the legal environment. When they chuckle that they charge £150

More Entrepreneurial Sales Lessons

All the papers I’ve read for the past ten days, each rolling-news channel segment seen, and every conversation with friends enjoyed, have all included significant bewilderment and gloom that we are definitely in a ‘recession’. One senior business executive-type chap I discussed this with even supports the Kondratieff view

Sales Year Resolutions

Driving along listening to the radio in sunny Cape Town Monday, I stumbled across a local fella [http://www.justinpresents.com] talking about why New Year Resolutions fail. I almost switched away within just a few seconds though. I’ve never been a fan of that all-too-American self-help evangelicism, and

I`d Like Your Opinion Please

I was on the phone talking with one of my customers about how his sales of a newly launched product were going. This happens to be a particular area of personal expertise for me that I’m humbled salesteams pay decent money to tap into. The conversation revealed a delicious

Learning Balance From Media Training

Any lover of the kind of entertainment provided by the peerless Paxo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Paxman], will have an interest in what media trainers get paid for. Many years ago I worked for a body that sent a few of my colleagues off for a day’s

Got A Trophy Product?

I came across this thought-provoking concept half-reading an article [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/3539900/Recession-is-no-menace-for-publisher-Dennis.html] in a coffee shop provided newspaper. The Economist weekly mag is, apparently just such a “trophy product”. Half of its sales go unread. Instead, they’re left in swanky reception