Topic

grapevine

A collection of 653 issues

Door Opening Dependency

Enjoyed reading an article in yesterday’s FT about Cheshire flooring entrepreneur Dawn Gibbons [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09d03f16-ad86-11dc-9386-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1] . Part of it recounted the tale of how she met her favourite marketing consultant. It’s a great story of how he, Dennis Humphries

Understanding The Business Window

Here’s a technique one of my customers uses to align what they can offer to where their prospect states they want to go. They call it the Business Window, and in the words of their Head of Sales, Dave, a chap I’ve a lot of time for, the

Less Big Picture

Loved the one-year-on Gerry Robinson back at the NHS show last night. I blogged on his findings before and again there are a couple of terrific pointers for reps. He gave a talk to NHS staff saying “it isn’t the big picture stuff” that creates success. Instead, it’s

The Luxury Of Choice

At a customer sales meeting recently, they ran a session on the pitfalls of Sam Salesperson. Sam was struggling. After one promising quarter, the next two missed target. The problem was an age-old one; not enough prospects. This proved to be a double-edged sword, for not only did it mean

Brooks Law Pitch

Surfing last night for a bit of relaxation, I realised that there are a number of blogs I like, but the google reader app doesn’t make it as neat as it could be to have your ‘web inbox’ show you what’s of interest. So I caught up with

Motor Show Syndrome

Here’s an interesting point picked up from a customer of mine that suffers every four years. The problem is that there’s a huge show in Germany every leap year. This heralds every major player’s new products. It’s big ticket capital equipment, and customers in that industry

Triple Sales Leader Focus

Waiting in a reception I turned towards the back of the FT lying there for a quick business related morsel. The book review [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0a8933a-92cd-11dc-b9e6-0000779fd2ac.html] greeted me of a fella with decades of industry-shaping experience on ‘strategy and resource allocation’; Joseph Bower. Strangely

Google Engineer Description

Don’t worry if you’re not that tekkie and have never heard of, let alone used an RSS feeder. I’ve used all sorts of ways to keep up-to-date on sites I really like and was hoping not to use ‘don’t do evil’ (‘oh yes you do’) google

Tip From SME Consultants

Came across an accountants that had grown over a seven-year period from a small office above a shop, to a 5-branch regional player with a purpose-built HQ. One reason they’d experienced such stellar growth, was their decision to offer clients more value-added services on top of traditional auditing. These

Self-Design Prompt

Speaking with one of my client’s reps yesterday, he gave me insight into what worked for him when selling insurance in a previous life in his native America. One of his favourite questions at the very start was “if you were designing your own solution, what would you have