Topic

grapevine

A collection of 653 issues

The First 3 Slides

How many ‘corporate overview’ presentations have you delivered? There comes a point in most sales campaigns when the prospect wants to know more about your firm. My early selling days allowed me to select any from around 100 of the old 35mil projection slides. My elders and betters reckoned 45

Tooth Comb Qualification

When I make business-related purchases, I secretly hope to pick up a selling tip from the hopeful vendor. One such case occured in Cape Town, not a place exactly brimming with dynamic business vibes. It’d had been a touch too long between discussions between me and vendor Peter. When

Overcoming Worn Down Buyer Cynicism

A customer of mine sell big ticket printing kit and software. It’s the highest price tag in the market, and customers luckily get what they pay for, as it’s considered ‘the best’. They’re addressing an issue at the moment with RoI business case presentations. It appears that

Opposite Extreme Bags A Whale

When I first started out reppin’, my (much older) sales colleagues used to talk of landing their “whale of a deal”. Breaking into ‘corporate’ acccounts took up a lot of our idle conversation time. There was often frustration that the highest paid reps would be given named accounts to hunt

A New Spin on SPIN

One of my customers many moons ago paid to join the Huthwaite ‘spin selling’ programme. Then later, they left the fold. Wanting to keep some of the best bits on-board, they evolved their use of the concept. They now call it NPINS. The idea is that the initials still stand

Personal Gain Identification

One of my customers recently had a 3-day Miller Heiman [http://www.millerheiman.com] strategic selling course. When I asked them the one thing that they took from it, their answer was unequivocal; uncovering personal gain. Most sales people have heard of the Miller Heiman Blue Sheet philosophy, which is

Politicians Avoid Details

Westminster village has been ablaze with recriminations over the on-off UK election these past few days. Now his ‘honeymoon’ is well and truly over, has Brown bottled it, destined to embarrasingly cling on to power till the end of the term, or has he flushed out the Tories strategies early,

Why Customers Switch

One of my current projects helps a sales team shift more of a ‘new’ product. It was first released a couple of years back, but no-one sold it (another sales substitution story). I spoke to one of the reps. I must have caught him at a low time. He wasn’

Field Coaching

Way back in Jan 2004, a client of mine embarked on a process of field coaching. The idea was to progress their individual’s repping skills whilst turning their sales managers into coaches, rather than process-watchers. They had around 160 sales people, and as managers had spans of control typically

Account Management Cycle

One of my customers derives a large chunk of their revenue from continually churning their kit in situ around their client base. The idea is that they sign people up on lease agreements, then before the lease completes, they’ll have a superb new innovation to swap-in, renew the agreement,