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quirky

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

Promoting & Spreading Best-Practice

Ever since reading a couple of days ago about ‘sales knowledge management’ being a key issue for sales team leaders (the foot of this post [http://salespodder.com/is-your-selling-changing/]), I’ve noted a couple of entertaining happenings about the drive to get best-practices spread across sales teams. At one label-printing

Turn '10 Minutes of Fame' into Process

I’m often asked what other sales teams do to enliven sales meetings. Most follow a tried and trusted pattern; figures, roasting/champagne, admin, touch of training, marketing/production/operations update, specialist speaker. I visited a product-labelling business last week where it was one of the occasions I wondered how

Stand-Up To Meeting Madness

What’s the biggest waste of a rep’s time? Well, coming second of course, but post-deal fire-fighting and spurious meetings run this close. I mention this as I had a nightmare journey to Cambridge from London. A plastic bag wrapped around a power-line and all hell broke loose on

The British Disease

I often say that if you can sell in the UK, you can sell anywhere. As a bunch, there are precious few dynamos around these islands, and the ones we’re lucky to produce tend to fly off and settle in far away climes. Nowhere is this more stark than

Lynch "Lap-Top Larries"

It happens all too rarely, I bumped into a pal at a prospect yesterday. Lovely to catch up, and it meant we cut straight to the chase. He described the company as an “awesome commodity distribution operation”. They’d just re-structured their salesteam, and one new charge is called Adam.

Persuading Kids To Eat Proper Food

There’s a ton of press in England right now about our epidemic of obese children. They’re all spending too much time on the internet, playing computer games, doing zilch exercise, and eating chips, pizza and sweets. What’s this got to do with my sales-help crusade? Well, an

It's Never All Or Nothing

I’m a huge advocate of spreading good news. Many sales teams get bogged down in mires of negativity, argument and insubordination. Surely a better place to be is where everyone is aligned to similar initiatives, and focus on joined-up accomplishment. Lamentably, this is rarely the case. One guy (a

"To Be Honest…."

This phrase has always irritated the hell out of me. When someone says this, it can often suggest the last thing they’re being is truthful. Yesterday I managed to get hold of a chap that I’d been referred to by someone I’d met last week for the

Beware The Snidey Salesrep

Met a fella at a huge car parts distributor. Good to meet him, as he’d risen to the top after starting out a van-driving sales rep aged just 17. He mentioned a couple of stories where recently he’d needed to reprimand a couple of his reps. Quality link-selling

Dragons Fall On Den’s Sword

I’ve always got off on ‘pop idol for start-ups’ showDragons’ Den [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/]. And Wednesday, with the new series about to kick-off, my heroes are exposed as muppets. My disenchantment, which means I’m now ambivalent to the whole show, stems from knowledge of ‘one