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quirky

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

Ride The 'New Wave'

Recently I’ve come across a spate of sales teams whose leadership is exasperated by the lack of extra sales key new product launches have brought in. It’s a long-known problem, classically referred to as “sales substitution”. This has two strands, the one I’ll deal with here typically

Buying on Price? Then prepare to pay twice….

Things often happen in 3s don’t they? At customers & prospects this very week, I’ve come across three separate instances of the same thing. (I wrote about one in detail [https://salespodder.com/can-you-match-that-price/] just a couple of days ago) In each case, sales people have yelped in

Recognising Showstoppers

I have a friend selling from his recently adopted New York base data mining kit for sales people. He’s been peddling this kind of stuff (aka ‘BI’ for the tekkies out there) since 99. He’s sold oodles of it in the meantime, and learned a fair bit about

Accent on Success in US

I did something my generation probably consider a bit nerdy in some rain-induced spare time over the weekend, although kids and non-Brits probably don’t get such hang-ups. I got involved in a forum discussing why it was that the English accent is apparently so successful when cold-caling in America.

New Sales Manager Turnaround, Blair-stylee

So Tony B-Liar finally ended his tenure of Number Ten. Paxo hosted a Newsnight Blairathon to assess his ‘legacy’. Unfortunately it included Alistair Campbell, which made me wonder how many of Newsnight’s 1½m loyal devotees view him as one of Britain’s most odious men, but at least

The Dignity Of Labour

Surprisingly not a reference to experimental Human League 1980ish singles pre-Dare, rather seeing how the libertarian inspiration of Charles Murray [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(author)] should enthuse sales people that don’t want to pick up the phone to take action. I saw an interview with former

Finding People That Will Buy 'New'

Came across the Global Entrepreneurial Monitor [http://www.gemconsortium.org/] through Newsnight [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm], with a researcher pointing out why UK had some way to go in fostering dynamism in this sector. A couple of the stats made me think about

Sales Team Schoolyards

Can’t kids be incredibly cruel? The kinds of abuse and torment metered out in playgrounds by people under three feet high can be astounding. Usually, the nightmare stops before long trousers become the order of the day. Monday was another crazily hot day in London; it’s August in

Failings of hardwork & effort

Yes, yes, I know this is jokespam, but what the hell. One of my muppet pals sent me this, despite my telling him not to include me in such nonsense emails. It reminded me that fairly regularly customers of mine (all sales people) send me right dodgy stuff. It’s

Nothing better to do?

If you’re thinking of buying Leach Lewis Plant wares, consider this carefully. In clearing out a load of old files, I came across this amazing letter, in response to a pre-cold-call mailer. Their then top man, a certain J P Leach, deigned to pass on the pearls of his