Topic

quirky

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

You Refuse To Hear The Word

Credit crunch begets recession begets depression? Hopefully not, but to watch rolling tv news channels, confusion becomes annoyance that they revel in such gloom and see negative growth as guaranteed prime time entertainment. A client of mine was talking this morning about how absurd and wrong it was that people

Renewing Dampened Enthusiasm

We’ve all been there. You’ve a new idea that you’re convinced your bosses will love. A new product you know will change your customer’s life. Excitedly, you deliver an impassioned pitch. Their response? Yawns, at best. Demoralisation crushes your pride. There are countless examples of world-beating

+15% Credit Crunch Impact

Listening to BBC Radio 4 most mornings recently, they’ve an innovative approach to consistent programming. Eight o’clock, Business Editor Robert Peston talks you through constructing your own gallows. Quarter-past eight, a pair of luminaries recommend their take on which rope makes the sturdiest knot and how to tie

Giving Up On CRM Adoption?

I read my latest Selling Power [http://www.sellingpower.com] newsletter on crm last night. They mentioned a piece of PR they’d received from the boss of a crm vendor [http://www.itworld.com/tip/53695/top-5-ways-get-your-employees-use-crm-software] . It was satisfying that they disagreed with a third of what he

By How Much Are Buyers Liars?

I think every salesperson goes through this rite of passage. You’re told that you are going to win a deal by the prospect. You proudly, maybe even smugly, pass on the good news to your boss, your peers, your support staff, your spouse, your pet. Then what? Jupiter mis-aligns

Fearlessness and Lack of Vanity

Here’s a quote I read whilst surfing in front of the telly waiting for the Champions League game to start. It’s from a woman that married a man 11-years her senior with an insufferable reputation for social ineptitude. And then had four children with him over the next

Purchasing Manager Frustration

A pal of mine used to be a buyer (I know, how could I…) and I was asking him his thoughts on what people might think in terms of a buying process for a product of mine. As we chatted, he revealed his pet hate with reps. He’d often

The Downside Torpedo

Over lunchtime earlier today I caught itinerant self-publicist and seemingly self-styled ‘entrepreneur’s entrepreneur’, Richard Branson, plugging his latest book on a radio show. And in these credit crunch selling-squeeze times, I was reminded of a wonderful piece of advice I was given at the start of my sales career

Mystery Shopper Trap

A friend was telling me about his sales benchmarking sideline. He offers clients a full competitive audit of their sales process, right through from initial enquiry to cancellation/returns. He’d recently conducted some work in the vaguely entitled ‘virtual assistant’ space. 16 firms were contacted. Just 5 emailed a

Keeping Attention

Two separate experiences have reminded me of the difficulties that surround not just engaging an audience, but of actually maintaining their interest. In one paper this morning, a “communications consultant” trots advice [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4799417.ece] out for Gordon Brown. As one of the