Topic

grapevine

A collection of 635 issues

Ask Your 'Tekkies' For Pitches

Speaking with a chap selling big ticket printing presses called Graham, I picked up a useful insight from him about intel he uses to throw into general “chit-chat” with prospects. With a portfolio in his bag including items costing well over a million, most potential buyers are aware they’ll

Incentive Effectiveness Example

What a terrific example of how incetives can work wonders. My great mate in Cape Town, Henry, runs an accounting Practice. With a government-imposed deadline on a particular filing requirement of 31 August looming, he realised normal productivity would not clear the inevitable backlog the authorities arbitrarily dreamed up. He

Blue Sky Perfect World

Just a couple of days ago, I had the delightful experience of one of my tekkies showing sparkling sales [http://salespodder.com/informal-requirements-analysis/] skill. And today I had a conversation with a fella of 20 years experience currently selling information to accountants. Amazingly, he uses the same approach to uncovering

Winning Major Accounts

Memories from a conversation with an MD of a datacomms type operation just now, are fresh with talk of Selling methodologies. These guys have an American corporate HQ that have got them to spend money on Miller-Heiman’s strategic selling. Part of the output included the famous ‘blue sheet’, which

Informal Requirements Analysis

Here’s an awesome application of a solution selling technique that one of my young coders hit me with the other day. And what a pleasure it was to hear. Alex wanted to know more about a particular app we’re developing internally to help productivity benefit from web 2.

Another Angle On 'No'

Sitting in yet another reception a Monday or two ago, I thumbed through the FT. An article about Business schools teaching by example [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/47515d92-0738-11dc-93e1-000b5df10621.html] naturally caught my eye. My personal exposure to the PR machine that is the Association of MBAs is many

Acknowledge Sales Backward Planning Realities

As the name implies, this technique takes as its starting point where you want to go, and works backwards from it to pinpoint what needs to happen to get there. A client of mine recently paid an external consultancy to work theirs out for them and make a plan. Without

Presentation Pauses & Structure

How many presentation skills training courses have you been on? It’s possibly the most common kind of sales-y training non-reps go on. There’s positively oodles of tips around the web, and to add to that surfeit, here’s three hints I took when hearing an explanation of just

Support, Don't Obstruct

Spent an engaging session with a newly appointed sales manager called Mark at a London prospect, who amongst many things, bemoaned why at his last place they mysteriously ripped out a bespoke system (despite it having universal rep approval) and replaced it with a Siebel one (which all the reps

Overcome Initial Resistance

Rocked up at a place a few Monday morning’s ago and almost immediately qualified out. Not only was it little more than a trade counter selling tools, so not my target market at all, but the fella in charge, Frank, said that no appointment was in fact arranged, and