Topic

quirky

ideas and experiences with a selling angle that come from left-field

First Impressions Last

A well-known truism, of course and one I was reminded of after a meeting I attended the other day. I began the forum with a simple sentence. One that put myself in the shoes of those on whom’s behalf we were outlining change and the impacts thereof. It was

Coalition Horse Trading

Being English, I’ve really only ever known majority government. Throughout my life it’s swung left and right, red or blue. Yet now as practically every tv station on the planet has covered, times they are a changing. Knock-knock hung parliament, hello coalition. It has been fascinating to watch

Minutes v Hours

Another channel surf, another talking head. This time former cabinet minister John Reid made a fascinating observation: > “in politics you can win the minutes but lose the hours” We’ve all heard a phrase around ‘won the battle, lost the war’ and the specificity of this slant is intriguing.

Political Elevator Pitch

Michael Brown was a Tory MP during the previous Conservative rule for 18-years. He is now a columnist for the Independent and a vibrant talking head on UK rolling news. He shared a delicious piece of personal experience with Margaret Thatcher. Apparently, she had instructed him to > “Get it

Appointment Booking Themes

I witnessed someone make a few calls, the aim of which was to get a meeting with people that worked in the public sector apportioning grants. The caller was fortunate that the calls were far from cold. Yet listening to a person that’d never made a cold call in

Scoping Budget?

How serious is your prospect about your project? The one that you’ve busily sacrificed anything from your once-hectic social calendar to the long-forgotten blissful balance of your treasured personal relationship to help make happen? How about testing their true intentions by surreptitiously pressing them around project scoping funds? Late

Consultant Estate Agent Parallels

Even today, comparatively large purchases often see companies seek the views of a middleman. Such resource is specifically brought in, perceived as having expertise at that time absent in the firm and expected to serve duties ranging from needs analysis, initial vendor screening and presentation chairing. In solution sales speak,

Journalistic Polarity

I’ve often been struck by how similar the job of a journalist can be to new business salespeople. The Times columnist Simon Barnes [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/] passed on this pearl about his tuition: > “It’s the first thing you learn on

Abacus Transaction Cost Shifts

Bloomberg News introduced me to the latest in a long-line of recently uncovered shady financial practices. It involves hiding the true state of losses by misleadingly moving around debt positions; their scrolling headline text “ Abacus transactions allowed Goldman Sachs to shuffle debt risk like beads“. Whilst such a policy rightly

Process versus Pointless

I’ve long been amazed by how different a winning salesperson’s thought processes can be when compared to their lesser-achieving counterparts. I was summing this up for someone unaware of the workings of the sales world the other day, and used the ‘serial as opposed to parallel’ analogy. Thinking