Topic

grapevine

A collection of 649 issues

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 At best bizarre, at worst inexcusable, this outdated behaviour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

Keep Demos Short

Over lunch I read an American article on presentation lessons for software demonstrators that could ‘have prospects buying without even asking the price’. Trying hard to contain my drooling, I did note there was one good point among the seven steps proposed. Apparently, prospects get overwhelmed with more than two

Follow The 70:30 Rule

A kind of semi-review this, as just before popping towards Covent Garden for drinks with some pals, I was rewarding myself for doing all the must-send mails by the end of the week by reading news items on the web. One of them lead me to http://www.quirkology.com/

The More You Give, The Higher You'll Get Dumped On

Looking forward to hopefully starting a project with an industrial parts distributor/manufacturer based in Sheffield, I met the top sales person Tuesday. One interesting topic was how to gain more share of each third-party distributor’s spend on their kinds of products. An instructive example was with one distributor

Help Buying Processes

Heading back to London on the train, read a fascinating architectural critic’s account of the March 2008 opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 in London’s Times newspaper. By his account, it’s set to be fabulous, on-time and on budget. Deep within the lengthy article were some wonderful comparisons

IBS Talking Points

The mention of IBS may send a teenager into fits of sniggers, but in the context of sales, I discovered the other day it can stand for Initial Benefit Statement. Hanging around in a conference room for a meeting to start, I couldn’t help but notice a few sheets

The Answer's in the Outlet

Met a thoroughly engaging chap today at what’s evolved from an office stationers to become a £200m powerhouse. He’d previously spent twelve years working for Coca-Cola in just about every sales role imaginable. We got to discussing what was best-practice for reps to tap into and he gave