quirky

We’ve all been there.  You excitedly book in a first meeting with a brand new prospect on the phone.  It’s in your diary for a few weeks.  You fire off confirmation of time, place and agenda.  You make other plans fit around the date.  Then inexplicably, when you

One of my customers was talking to me about how, with only one other player in his market space, he was never quite sure whether to ask if the competition were on the scene with a prospect. My immediate reaction was ‘no!’, never allude the to opposition.  Best to focus

Political phrase de jour, nudge policies, took up residence in this week’s chattering class tv.  The theory is that (by implication, centre-left) governments have for years wasted their time telling people what to do.  Instead, they’re better nudging people in the required direction.  A recent success along such

Thought-provoking positioning realities hit me whilst watching Jeff Randall on Sky News Monday night.  Although his forte is the written word rather than interviews, he did arrive at one spell-binding observation on British retailing 2008. As consumers begin to listen to the self-fulfilling misery from financial banking-biased journos talking us

A friend of mine is currently studying for a distance learning style degree around business finance.  She was getting the evident irritation with having to do a computer module off her chest, when during her explanation of computer crime categories, the salami technique was mentioned. This is where small amounts

Blogging the other day on experiences with credit crunch [http://salespodder.com/credit-crunch-focus/] thinking, I went on to explain what this means in the context of our sales plans with guys in one of my offices. We discussed why business people would buy something.  The idea was to create a

Something so simple I cannot believe it didn’t occur to me before.  In my current cold-calling crusade almost 25% of my sample’s receptionists wouldn’t pass on their firm’s ‘head of sales’ name, claiming some ridiculous policy or other. In England, such people are usually referred to

So last week I sent 14 emails to firms (suspects) where their receptionist told me they had a ‘no names policy’.  My email was sent either to a specified address given to me by said first-line answerer, or one I had to get off their website.  Typically, these addresses start

I’ve been back in the saddle reminding myself of the very beginnings of the sales process.  My intention is to secure a customer for a recent product addition from a totally cold start.  To this end, I accessed a listing of firms from the ‘software and services’ sector.  The