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quirky

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

Approaching A New Prospect Pool

I’ve just had to let one of my boiler-roomers go. No need to feel too sympathetic, the hit-rate for young bucks isn’t great I know, although no-one likes a mercy-killing. It’s always surprised me how initial enthusiasm can wane when another idea enters someone’s head. And

Quick Win Enabled

I often come across a nasty objection, which is basically “I’m new in the role, call me in six months”. Talking with a pal of mine last night over a cheeky pint, he’d encountered something similar. He works for HP, who have a £30m a year customer in

Is Cold Calling Beneath You?

I’ve done a couple of meetings with a 3-rep business recently that’ll never buy from us, eventhough they’d really benefit from my services. They were the first entrant into the English search engine optimisation arena a decade ago. Last time out I met the MD, fresh from

Always Room For Another Diet

I spoke earlier today with a fella that seems courted by the likes of Microsoft and salesforce.com as an SaaS guru (that’s software-as-a-service, or web-accessed gear if you prefer). He made an interesting comment that people running sales teams are possibly the most put-upon, miserable people on the

Words To Avoid

Two valuable learning experiences I gained in the mid-90s alerted me to the over-formality of sales letter writing. The first involved a sales manager of mine commenting that I was too structured at the beginning of a letter. Saying things that didn’t need saying. As a result, I altered

Ditch Competitor Pricing Obsessions

A customer of mine’s just distributed one of their smaller, niche competitor’s price list around their sales team. The guy who obtained it got all excited and thought it’d help them beat up the young whipper-snappers more. I’ve never been able to see this. These people

Web-Enabled Laziness

You ask any CEO, and they’ll tell you the vast majority of reps are lazy. There are all sorts of historical reasons for this. I, for my part, know that most reps are indeed lazy. They tend by their very nature to seek out short-cuts, follow the quickest paths

Retail idiots in Cape Town

So there I was in Cape Town and my local mobile number from the MTN network decided not to work. Having been in this position before, I went into one of their kiosks and asked for it to be re-activated. Unlike on the previous occasion, I was given flannel about

Tell-tale signs of true caring

Suffered a disappointing experience with one of my own customers this morning, especially galling as I’d given them a bit of reciprocal trading. I arrived at one of their facilities (where they were unaware I was both supplier and customer) and all started well. Then during my transaction I

In-bound Enquiry Handling

I’ve needed to get some repro work for a couple of weeks now. I’ve put off sorting it out, as it’s not the most glamourous of things on my todo list let’s face it. I fired off a couple of emails to the leading guys my