Topic

trendwatch

A collection of 66 issues

Sales Plyometrics

In the decade or so since hanging up my beloved sporting boots I’ve seen several fitness fads glow and fade. Military pre-dawn bootcamps, H-I-T, pilates, zumba, even (the surely cheating) slendertone belts. Now I discover the latest; plyometrics [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyometrics]. Known as plyos to its

Congruence Selling

Let’s see if we can take off from a current buzzword our marketing cousins are using; congruence. This is where all elements of what you do must be congruent with your overall standpoint. Where each experience with you follows a central theme that confirms your uniqueness and value. One

Micro App Salvation?

Many moons ago I came across a construction supplier trying to help their salesteam get better. Their external trainers developed an optimum sales conversation tree. Reams of paper. Which never got read. I then enabled these to be tapped online. Clicked through in an instant. Whether in the office or

Sales X.0

Who can forget the fanfare around Sales 2.0? Social media was the amazing mousetrap destined to make buyers hurtle irresistibly towards our selling stall. Then lately there was Industry 4.0. Not solely another flaccid WEF vibe [http://salespodder.com/industry-4-0-applied-to-your-niche/]. Which was in part similar to (or perhaps

Gegenselling

With the bi-annual failure fest for an Englishman that is each international football tournament done, taking stock of the club season just completed there is only one real story. Yet in the wings perhaps this next coming season’s fairytale is already taking shape. Twelve months ago I was privileged

Performance Review Scrap

About time. The corporate trend to scrap performance reviews gathered serious momentum this week. Yet another global behemoth chose to get rid of this vile, septic procedure. Now consultant Accenture finally realise they only reward narcissistic self-promoters [http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-brilliant-reason-why-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-companies-is-getting-rid-of-performance-reviews--bkB4iz0IXe] . Compounded by longtime gripes of distraction,

Pinpoint Bid Message Cut-Through To Win Against The Odds

Or… Warning: No Cut-Through No Win. May I introduce a new addition to our selling lexicon; > cut-through. Example;“we won because we saw cut-through”. If your proposal does not possess this quality, then you have no message. I caught frequent use of this term by the chatterati surrounding the

Are You Ready For Episelling?

I came across the field of epigenetics. My initial discovery came courtesy of a pop-science author whose huge seller 13 things that don’t make sense I read way back in 2010. Michael Brooks’ latest tome is The Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise. We seem to

Fundercrat Recommends Seeding Your Non-Disruptive Platform

I tagged this post trendwatch, and then realised I don’t use that tag enough. Anyway, there’s an interesting, if unfortunately rarely inspirational, section on TechCrunch featuring ten minute video interviews; Ask a VC [http://techcrunch.com/video/ask-a-vc/]. I’ve watched almost an hour of this now and

Sales Activity Shift

[http://saleschallenger.exbdblogs.com/2011/02/07/are-your-salespeople-spending-too-much-time-in-front-of-customers/] An American study of over 5,000 salespeople suggests that in just a few short quarters of the last decade, face-to-face selling time fell off a cliff. A 26% drop apparently. If these end-of-’09 stats were a week’s worth of