Topic

quirky

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

Sales Email Management: A Solution?

Watching Sky News Sunday afternoon I was alarmed to watch a piece explaining that the average worker wastes 49 minutes every day on email management. In addition, a recent anaylst reckoned that interrupting your current task in response to a new email alert creates 4 minutes of disruption [http://news.

Deadlines, Not Guidelines

Here’s a wonderful phrase my Cape Town pal Paul passed on to me over the weekend. Ever bemoaned the lack of progress from a pre-sales helper-cum-techie, supposedly helping you with vital prospect prep? In my case, I was trying to work out how to rush-up a local supplier, who’

"Mooning" Competition?

Most of the sales teams I meet cite one specific competitor with whom they enjoy (or endure!) locking horns, where intense battles often focus on their opponent’s inferior product at cheaper cost stealing away business. Then travelling to Heathrow to catch a flight I picked up a deshevelled paper

What's Good For The Goose Isn't Always Also Good For The Gander

One of my customers sells to accountants. A rep there frustratingly recounted to me how a paradox causes him much irritation. Bean counters tend to espouse diligent processes and talk of returns to their clients when assessing investment, yet when it came to his wares, they rarely applied such vigilence

Expansion Territory time?

Met a chap that’d been at their firm for twenty years, joining just three-months after establishment. In that time they’d experienced solid, steady performance, with the last three years seeing a new level of growth. Recent expansion was enjoyed in part due to two new reps ripping up

Avoid The Mumble Zone

Had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch in the first London sunshine of the Summer yesterday with the head of one of my customer’s sales teams. He’d a process of “CCRs” (client contact reports) which unsurprisingly the reps never filled out. He knew that his post-sales Services team became party

Sales Pledge Cards

The first time I ever saw a pledge card was on a video during a lecture at Uni. A greying English corporate middle-manager was salivating on the virtues of Deming’s 14 points [http://www.deming.org/theman/teachings02.html] of quality. As a group of students, I sensed most

Sales Bosses Top 5 Dangers

What are the top dangers sales operations face today? According to 2,663 such organisations polled recently, they are these 5: 1. Poorly defined sales process 2. Individual skill shortages 3. Unfocussed sales activity 4. Self-limiting belief prevails 5. Management not nurturing I see all of the above inside the

Going over their head

This is such an age-old problem, yet I cannot recall ever speaking to someone who had a genuine answer to it. The scenario is, you’re selling to one person and things are not necessarily going your way. So you must talk to their boss. What do you do? a)

G8 ‘Special Relationship’ Evaluation

Political anoraks will no doubt be into the annual meeting between the world’s self-styled 7 most important leaders and Russia, currently taking place this year in Germany. The British Fourth Estate have been giving it blanket coverage, what with climate change policy vital and Putin playing up. One such