Topic

grapevine

A collection of 635 issues

CSI Selling Tip

I was forced to watch an episode of the American CSI output Sunday. It was the one set in Vegas. In days of yore I loved watching all those really intelligent ‘new breed’ of detecting shows. I refer to the ones that make the effort to go deeper, like Morse,

More Sales Reality TV

The doyen of business reality telly has got to be ex-ICI Chairman John Harvey-Jones, with his awesome Troubleshooter series throughout the early Nineties. Since then, several pop-tv shows have introduced helping businesses escape dire straits (like the aforementioned show), pitting contestants against one another for dream jobs, through to start-up

Buying on Price? Then prepare to pay twice….

Things often happen in 3s don’t they? At customers & prospects this very week, I’ve come across three separate instances of the same thing. (I wrote about one in detail [http://salespodder.com/can-you-match-that-price/] just a couple of days ago) In each case, sales people have yelped in anguish

Can You Match That Price?

Had an enjoyable lunch yesterday with a good guy called Keith, where we were talking about how to arm a prospect so that when their boss looked at two opposing quotes, when ours is the more expensive we can still prevail without dropping our pants. And when I got home

Delivery Innovation?

Met a prospect today with an enviably impressive track record. Founded by a dozen people, ten of them Directors, at the turn of the century, they already sell £29m of lighting product to trade wholesalers. Their first strapline was “Halogen Lighting Specialists”. This distinguished them from other competitors, who sold

New Sales Manager Turnaround, Blair-stylee

So Tony B-Liar finally ended his tenure of Number Ten. Paxo hosted a Newsnight Blairathon to assess his ‘legacy’. Unfortunately it included Alistair Campbell, which made me wonder how many of Newsnight’s 1½m loyal devotees view him as one of Britain’s most odious men, but at least

Learning From 'Cool' Brands

Lucky enough to stay in one of those trendy boutique type hotel [http://www.hotelduvin.com/]s over the recent bank holiday weekend, the type you like ‘cos it doesn’t remind you of your grandmother’s house, there is a noticable absence of dado rails and porcelain ornaments like

The Golden Hour

Britain is in the grip of collective trauma after a three-year old toddler’s abduction from an Algarve holiday apartment. The local police force face a barrage of complaint from The Fourth Estate, as the Portugese authorities don’t do communication. At best bizarre, at worst inexcusable, this outdated behaviour

The Dignity Of Labour

Surprisingly not a reference to experimental Human League 1980ish singles pre-Dare, rather seeing how the libertarian inspiration of Charles Murray [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(author)] should enthuse sales people that don’t want to pick up the phone to take action. I saw an interview with former

Assessing Reps

Been dealing with a thoroughly engaging Scotsman recently that sells software all over Europe, Asia Minor and Africa. When I last met him, he was bemoaning the lack of an Angolan visa, thwarting some of his current ambitions. He gave me a fascinating insight into how his bosses tried to