Topic

reviews

A collection of 166 issues

Lessons From Retail Guru

I’ve always been interested in retailing as a profession. I could never understand as a nipper suffering drab, uninviting and unhelpful Brummie high streets in my formative years how come everyone seemed so inept. Then the landscape began to change. Anita Roddick (The Body Shop), George Davies (Next) and

Reinforcing Tired Unhelpful Stereotypes

I’ve glanced an eye at the Sky reality show Badger or Bust a few times [http://salespodder.com/more-sales-reality-tv/] now. I continue to be delighted someone is allowed to promote all things sales on prime time telly. My lament remains the requisite depth is sacrificed for human misery and

Sales Idol

Of interest to anyone in the UK that sells, would you believe it, there’s now a pop-idol-meets-big-brother-cum-survivor-stroke-apprentice style reality tv show for us in the offing. Under the snappy headline Commission Impossible [http://www.closethedeal.co.uk/], there’s an application form to fill in to help get whittled

CSI Selling Tip

I was forced to watch an episode of the American CSI output Sunday. It was the one set in Vegas. In days of yore I loved watching all those really intelligent ‘new breed’ of detecting shows. I refer to the ones that make the effort to go deeper, like Morse,

More Sales Reality TV

The doyen of business reality telly has got to be ex-ICI Chairman John Harvey-Jones, with his awesome Troubleshooter series throughout the early Nineties. Since then, several pop-tv shows have introduced helping businesses escape dire straits (like the aforementioned show), pitting contestants against one another for dream jobs, through to start-up

Follow The 70:30 Rule

A kind of semi-review this, as just before popping towards Covent Garden for drinks with some pals, I was rewarding myself for doing all the must-send mails by the end of the week by reading news items on the web. One of them lead me to http://www.quirkology.com/

Making Globalisation Work & Become Trusted

This is a book written by an American academic called Joseph Stiglitz. I came across a podcast of the author talking about what he was trying to get across, citing numerous examples of his proposed reform agenda. He’s canny, in maintaining a nice balance of argument, so that you

Dan Kennedy Sales Spam

As you may know, I am often ambivalent towards the multitude of self-styled ‘sales gurus’. There are a number I quite rate. Tom Hopkins [http://salespodder.com/?p=20]’ is one such winner. Yet my mind changes channel with those that let their so-called ‘personality’ interfere with their message. Particularly

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

Attack Like Norman's Shark

I remember thinking Greg Norman was great. In my formative years, my sporting heroes were all True English Leaders; David Gower, Trevor Francis, Seb Coe. Legends one and all, with similar charismatic, elegant and unconventional qualities. Then I discovered golf. England could only produce personality-devoid characters (although amazingly Nick Faldo