Topic

process

A collection of 173 issues

How To Frame A Conversation

The sales-savvy CEO of a £60m business shared with me this little nugget recently. He described a piece of consultancy he’d had a few years back which he liked. It offers a framework for speaking to a senior person (or C-level Exec, as today’s jargon goes). it gives

Passion Before Reason

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume] At the start of my second ever day of sales training, the old sage conducting affairs wrote up on a flip chart the following teaser; the decision to buy is ____% emotional and it was open forum to fill in the blank with a

Falling Out The Sky

You hear it on documentaries. Even Malcolm Gladwell referred to it in Outliers. When a plane crashes it is seldom through one single, isolated cause. It’s usually because several small things happen. When one wrong turn occurs, subsequent issues arise which can compound it. Combined, these cue tragedy. [http:

The Sales Platform

Many years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the ever-genial leader inside international transporter Keuhne & Nagel’s sales operation. I’d like to say Bob Ashkettle was very much old school. Strip out the Luddite connotation, mind. Big on relationship and big on new ideas, a popular and successful

Challenge Meetings

Here’s an interesting selling stage that a specialised business broker uses. As part of their pre-engagement work with a business owner, they always seem to find that the prospective vendor has what they term an “aspirational value” higher than the true worth of their firm. [http://www.lowmanbrown.com/

Heston's Recipe

[http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/] As any foodie will tell you, uber-chef Heston Blumenthal [http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/] is a man at the top of his game. Given the extraordinary amount of rain the early season cricket has suffered, it was a delight to hear him during

Tempo Management

This is evidently an inside phrase as used by football referees. It relates to the flow of the match. In England, referees are renowned and praised for an observed focus to “keep the game flowing”. When the on-pitch atmosphere gets a little spicy though, with tasty tackles and plenty of

Four In Five Need Process

I don’t land at Selling Power often these days. Not since it went, well, a bit too ‘American’. I don’t mean the good bits of Americanism of course. The can-do-ness, the innovation, the praise where it’s due and, to quote Stewart Lee, the prawns five times the

Buying Bias

[http://hbr.org/product/before-you-make-that-big-decision/an/R1106B-PDF-ENG] You know you’re on the back foot when your prospect doesn’t share their buying criteria with you. Likewise, when you get to shape such potential assessment, you’re on to a winner. In either case, what can you do to shore

Is The West History?

[http://www.channel4.com/programmes/civilization-is-the-west-history] Where’s there a more engaging academic than historian Niall Ferguson? His latest tv series spends four and a half hours promoting the six ‘killer apps’ (as he dubs them) that enabled Western Civilisation to flourish like none before it. These banners are; > Competition