quirky

> “This, alas, is fairly typical of the engineering mindset, which would rather spend £1,000 on technology than spend £1 on telling people how to use it.” “This”, to which Rory Sutherland refers, is a King Canute obstinacy that can be expanded to cover just about any business exec spending

Reminded this time of year by his classic three ghosts of Christmas, I’ve added to the great novelist’s original trio of his motto; > make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait, make ’em buy. Tagging on a fourth at the end. We are salespeople, after all. I

Have you and your prospect a special word? No, not that kind… One that uniquely frames all that’s going on with your current bid. From problem source, identification and manifestation. To solution construction, deployment and impact. What will be gone. What will be done. It can be an actual

Here’s a piece of Autumnal prose in the FT, triggered in part by the calamitous England public sector track and trace system, from ‘everyday economist’, Tim Harford; > “…the possibility of rapid learning. When the aeronautical engineer Paul MacCready was working on human-powered aircraft in the 1970s, his plane — the

The UK ‘nudge unit’ (founded in 2010 after the breakthrough behavioural science book of Sunstein & Thaler) assessed coronavirus transmission. Results reported towards the end of November found the infection’s version of the Pareto ratio; 60/8. Whereas Pareto back in the day may (or may not) have found Italian

> Just did #PartySwap [https://twitter.com/hashtag/PartySwap?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] on @KennedyNation [https://twitter.com/KennedyNation?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw], in which my role was to serve as the left-wing commentator. Here’s my first answer: pic.twitter.com/CUpaQxMU3u [https://t.co/CUpaQxMU3u] — Guy Benson

A celebrity ex-royal constantly invading their own privacy seems to be backing away from an invasion of privacy trial against a mass circulation publication. Having requested a nine-month delay in providing personal information as part of proceedings, there appears not a single voice from the ‘learn-ed’ talking heads who think

Around 2016 I overheard a well-paid salesperson take ‘blame’ for something that was not their fault. They’d let the prospect off the hook for messing up on organising a meeting. I had recently seen the first season of Billions. I recounted the above scene from it. Where the public

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6aHyuuthns] The ‘best’ product never wins. This is the refrain longtime furrow-browed sellers pass on to wide-eyed newbies. It bounces off the quality misnomer. The highest in ‘quality’ not being the Gucci, Rolls-Royce or Macallan. It has nothing to do with pricetag or perceived