Topic

grapevine

A collection of 650 issues

Two Tequilas!

On the day of my ceremonial birthday, I’m reminded of a recent time, after all the years walking into bars, how incredible it is when something ‘new’ happens. Sales-savy too. Nearing the counter, I enquired of my companion, ‘what do you fancy?’ Immediately, one of the two bartenders slammed

14yo Flip Flop Choice

Flip-flops, thongs, slops, zories, plakkies. Summers over the past decade has seen a tough battle for your beachwear -sandal cash. Brazilian firms have taken a strong hold, led by Havaianas, with (not-so?) copycat upstarts Ipanema gaining ground. I happened across a market stand exclusively selling both. An array larger than

Cross-Selling Symphony

The incoming Chairman of American telecoms conglomerate Comcast gets plenty of positive press. Sector-beating stock price growth during his decade of acquisitive tenure as media arm NBCUniversal CEO. Apart from the voracious buying up of expensive broadcasting rights and other media giants, one policy appears to have borne organic fruit;

Three-Year Itch

What does the natural relationship graph look like for your sector? I remember fondly the business IT cycle I first sold into. We knew how often people were likely to review their current set-up. And how likely they were to then replace their existing supplier. Such maths certainly helped with

Data Drowning Information Overload Anti-Stalling

I blogged recently touching on an alarm bell. When someone does not want something to be bought, and they attempt to drown proponents in data. Endless reams of the stuff. Then I came across this piece for my anti-inertians dreams; The Status Quo Is Risky, Too [https://hbr.org/2014/

What Kind Of Deal You Looking For?

An old-hand relayed to me their experience of meetings snagged by unending tech talk. When a buyer and vendor with a technical bent go ever deeper into and longer around the intricacies of the bid it usually spells disaster. If not a sibling then certainly a cousin of Happy Ears

Do You Reference The Predecessor?

Here’s a real-life message I heard dropped on a sales call the other day: > “Hi Vicky, it’s [name] from [org] here. I dealt with your predecessor Dan and would love to speak to you about some events we’ve got coming up. My number is … and I

Metrics From Robo-Recruiting

Always pleased to hear use in solution selling of metrics, I glean current boasts from the exploding deployment of AI in recruiting. A while back I came across RPA vendors; Robotic Process Automation. Now far removed from the “Press 1” of automated call handling. We all know SkyNet is coming,

Pitch The Shuttle Not The Train

There’s plenty of coverage right now for the 25th anniversary of the terrific Channel Tunnel. From idea to project go-ahead seems to have taken around six years gestation. A couple of years later digging began. Another two on and miners starting from each side met in the middle. Four

Happy Ears Syndrome

I did chuckle at this phrase I heard recently. A wizened operator described an age-old malaise, afflicting too many an inexperienced sales meeting with a prospect. Where the prospective vendor thinks everything went great. The potential client “loves” them and their product. Yet once left, the simple “A-B-C” of questions