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grapevine

A collection of 657 issues

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,

Deliver Business Case With Conviction

I’ve always enjoyed attending my customer’s workshops that are run by a respected person from elsewhere in their organisation. This is because they have instant and greater gravitas with the reps than an external trainer would, and such reverence allows them to push the reps further. Sessions like

The Power Of One

One of my customer’s sales management team were recently summoned to a European conference where new solution sales techniques were passed down from a central corporate training resource. One particular topic I know they all liked was about talking credible numbers when it came to benefits. All too often,

Would You Buy Tat?

The majority of sales teams I help are not the cheapest in their space. For some, far from it, and they take on the perennial struggle of having to justify themselves against a large hole in the floor through which their competition’s price has just dropped. Many a salesteam

How Special Do Your Customers Feel?

Encouraging greater propensity to continue buying is a topic I constantly grapple with in my selling. Most of my clients buy my services month after month. This means the longer I keep them as happy customers, the longer they put food on my plate at a decent margin. Reading the

Closing Yellow Pages Trap Door

One of my recent customers is an extremely forward thinking company from the sales systems and support perspective. Even down to one of their top reps demanding they ran a sales blog of success. That very same fella, John from East Anglia described one of the facets to his account

Preventing Dissatisfaction Dip

A sales guy at a customer of mine articulated this issue to me beautifully the other day. A relationship proved to be healthy by the placing of an order for our wonderful piece of kit can deteriorate without us knowing post-sale. Setting expectations whilst prospecting can prevent this. Guiding the