grapevine

I feel very lucky sometimes that, being an enthusiastic student of selling, every single day something happens that either teaches me something new, or reinforces something I may well have forgotten. Yesterday I was having a business lunch.  Sounds decadent for 2006, but in reality was a simple burger and

I got a great idea from a first-time meeting just now.  I’ve been in several such forums recently, as I’ve just taken on lots of bright new sales people.  Anyway, without giving the crown jewels of my prospect away, the particular service they sell lends itself beautifully to

Yet more body-language type techniques I came across today.  I was with a sales force that 2-years prior had a boat-load of skills training around pitching and posturing.  During our discussion (and bear in mind we spent only 30 secs on this) it seemed to me like reading a page

In a first meeting in the morning, the potential customer started off by saying how they remembered the initial cold call from one of my guys as it was all about “retreat and repeat”.  I’d never heard this description before so asked what it meant. Apparently, it’s where

I took a step back during a meeting with a fella called Paul Walker recently.  He was giving me insight into how come his salesrep retention rates were the envy of his industry.  And impressive they are; average tenure being seven-and-a-half years. He believed a major reason was down to

Kyosei is pronounced, so I’m told, ‘kay-o-say’. Had an entertaining meeting early today with a guy called Phil Browne, with terrific growth plans for his Canon (photocopier to document management) reseller business.  His company has been going for several years, and we discussed their strategic theme; Kyosei. It’s

Been doing some work with my customer service guys which I realise can help sales people.  I’ve never been a fan of seeing the same word used more than once within a piece of prose, and I kept seeing ‘increase’ & ‘decrease’ cropping up in their reports with irritating

Came across a salesguy called Stuart Glimstead at one of my customers earlier today, who had a response for when a prospect starts going on about cheaper competition. His first retort is simply “why do you think they’re cheaper?” He finds this begins to place a seed of doubt

For the past few years I’ve known a fella called Mike Witchell, a sales manager at one of my customers.  He’s one of the good guys, albeit with a dangerous obsession in motorcycle racing at the weekends. I’ve just come across an old email of his explaining

Just watched a reality TV show (Alan Sugar’s Apprentice) pitting two teams against each other to sell cars in an enormous London car supermarket,  They got initial training from an expert sales manager.  His most-used phrase ended up being “End Of”, as he kept having to give bollockings and