quirky

Well, there I was sitting at a desk near the front door of my Cape Town office, safely away from the Winter cold and rain talking away about a customer project, when in walked a women in a beret, with a huge black cotton holdall slung over her shoulder. Unused

I guess this must be happening to several salesreps, and is likely to gather pace.  You’re supplying someone that all of a sudden, decides to take what you’ve been faithfully selling from a far flung land instead. One of my customers told me today about a famous story

Been reading quite a few mags now that I’ve a bit of R&R downtime on my hands during Cape Town’s Spring evenings.  Reluctantly I was drawn to Men’s Health [http://www.menshealthsa.co.za].  Lazily thumbing through, realising what I was invited to read could

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.

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’

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

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

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

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

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