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quirky

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

Stress Test

Making big news Friday was the EU’s report on which of the 91 European banks studied failed their stress test. Seven smaller, regional players didn’t come up to the mark, five Spanish and one apiece from Germany and Greece. Yet most commentators appeared to say that the tests

Cooling Off

Are there only two poles of decision making timeline? There’s the impulsive, in a Gladwellian Blink style. Make it quick, on the hoof, with as little time as possible lapsing after causation towards action. If it’s wrong, you can always exercise ‘fast failure’ and re-direct. Then there’s

Sales 2.0 Sideshow

I was socialising with a team of new business salespeople when the conversation turned to use of their shiny new crm. Unsurprisingly most were unenamoured with it. When one described it as “a sales 2.0 sideshow”, debate began on what exactly the ‘two-point-oh’ part meant. One abstract on which

Is Your Process An Outcome?

I often blog about one fundamental mistake both much sales management and practically all crm systems make. They fail to distinguish between activity and results. My experience is that when confronted with a choice, most sales management structures veer towards ‘activity’ as their primary driver. My firm view is that

Vuvuzela Pump

I am a vuvu god! Bloody hell those things are annoying. They remove all perspective from a game inside the stadium, truly detracting from the experience of a football match. But when you’ve got one in your grasp, they are impossible to resist. A young lady first offered me

Moral Hazard

At some stage everyone gets acquainted with the dilemma of how to respond to bad behaviour. Faced with whether to rescue such fallings can cause sleepless nights when you feel that you might inadvertently be rewarding them and thereby encourage future failings of a similar nature, rather than stem their

Foreshortened Forward Thinking

As I blog this, here’s a manhunt for an armed killer on the run in England’s N East. He has apparently said that he “wants to go out in a blaze of glory”. I caught criminologist Jamie Wilson describe his state of mind on Sky News. His worried

Generate Conversation

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a lady that I do not know. Her name is Jane. I do though know her firm and have dealt with them for a few years now. She wrote to me (and several others) to inform me of her new type

In 10 Seconds; Go!

Arh, Kylie [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylie_Minogue]. Kylie, Kylie, Kylie. On the interview milkround to promote her latest album she truly shone in her Sky News outing [http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Kylie-Minogue-Singer-Talks-To-Steve-Hargrave-About-Her-Boyfriend-Becoming-An-Auntie-And-Cancer/Article/201006415655768?lpos=Showbiz_News_Second_Home_Page_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=

Whitehall Spending Challenge

Here’s a pair of facts presently emblazoned across screens in the UK’s aftermath of the new (coalition) Government’s emergency budget: > £952 Billion – total current debt £155 Billion – current deficit The figures are of eye-watering worry. Britain owes almost One Trillion pounds Sterling. Staggeringly, that’s over