It’s August, it’s quiet, it’s the silly season,
and judging by the activity on Twitter, Linked-in and Facebook and the lack of
activity on the roads and trains, holidays are still in fashion despite the
recession. Some clients are returning from a break with a new perspective, a
new set of priorities, but, some are, “back to the grind” or “feels like I’ve
never been away.”

Continue reading "What's really important?"

I'm a user of Virgin Wines web-based service, I enjoy a glass or several and they provide good quality vino at sensible prices, in a no-nonsense, pragmatic and very fast way. But that isn't what has impressed me. As a regular and frequent buyer of a number of cases they invited me to join their wine club, where they add a thirteenth bottle of a wine of their choice to every case of wine, quite clever, shift excess stock, get customers to try new wines, increase customer satisfaction, but that’s not what has impressed me. 
Continue reading "I’m not whining about Virgin Wines, an impressive customer service story"

A recent phone call; “This is your telecoms company, we’re wondering if
you’d like to commit to a further 24 months on your existing tariff” 
“What?”  “Why?”  “When is this contract due for renewal?”  “Not for
another 4 months”.

"So I can commit to you for another 28 months, or...

Continue reading "What's in it for me?"

There’s a lot to be said for familiarity. There’s a reason why we miss the little corner shop and the grocer who knew everyone’s name. There’s a reason we’re generally loyal to our favoured supermarket chain, websites and restaurants. We know them, we know what we’re getting, we’ve a history of mostly being happy with what we’ve got and in some excellent cases we’ve either got a relationship or the sense of one (buy a few things from Wiggle.com to understand a great customer experience). 
Continue reading "On not breeding contempt…"

In these testing times many of our clients are busy (and have been for many months) making sure that their sales force are working like beavers exploring every opportunity to get in front of old and new prospects, to explore the need and to set out their stalls.
We got a call from a Sales Director, an old chum and valued client who’d inherited a very experienced team, specialist sales folk and expert, (in their field) client managers. She was convinced that opening up new markets was the only way to go and was having a tough time getting them to explore opportunities in new markets, well out of their comfort zones.

She asked for our thoughts. We spoke with the team and identified some obvious (and less obvious) issues...


Continue reading "Jumping out of the sales rut, a recessionary story"

There was an advert on the TV recently for www.gotomeeting.com (a rather
good product from Citrix which lets you share stuff, walk people
through things etc.), but it was the slogan that made our flesh crawl,
“unlimited meetings”...

Continue reading "Where's the customer?"

Sales people are front line fodder and used to getting both accolades and brickbats; sadly it’s mostly the latter at the moment. When times are tough the pressure is on to “get more leads” and “close every single deal” but how many companies ask themselves whether they’re pushing people who are trying to flog a proposition that the market is just not interested in?

Continue reading "About Flogging and Horses…"

Having just spent two full days at the Technology for Marketing show
it’s been interesting to reflect on what’s old, what’s new and what’s
changed. The conclusion we came to is that whilst marketing folk are
getting all excited about social networking there’s not much that’s new
for sales people, with one notable exception.
Continue reading "TFMA – So what’s new?"

I occasionally park in a car park in the lovely Mediterranean city paradise that is Woking. There was a simple and convenient system for parking in the council owned car parks...
Continue reading "A matter of convenience, a matter of words, that matter..."

Considering how much time and effort goes into entering tons of data into the typical CRM system you’d think that the suppliers would make it a lot easier to extract some intelligent understanding of what’s really going on. Not a bit of it, according to our customers. A sales team unsupported by an automated system is not an option but getting real value out of what’s put in is usually far too difficult.

Continue reading "It shouldn’t be a black hole…"

Walk around your sales team, where are the account plans? Typically they’ll be sitting on a shelf unread for months and deemed irrelevant to the current priority of digging up as many deals as possible, after all, how would they help you to make your numbers in a tight market?

Continue reading "Taking Account Management off the shelf "

Walking past a building site recently I noticed a laminated safety sign advising all workers of the need to register at the site office, which makes sense but the sign referred to personell.
Continue reading "Two idol two do it write?"

A good question, although hardly original, and one which might reasonably be asked of anything new.  Twitter, like many web-based applications, is flexible, adaptable and easy to enhance.  Ease of change and instant feedback enable applications to evolve very quickly, to deliver what users want and need, but which may, or may not be, what was originally intended.
Continue reading "What is the point of Twitter?"

Marketing: "We've done so much for you, delivered so many leads, why haven't you done anything with them? "

Sales: "All those leads are just tyre kickers, if I'm going to reach my target I've got to speak to buyers."

Marketing: "We've spoken to them, they're just the right sort of people for us and they're asking for more information"

Sales: "Well, they aren't going to buy anything yet so I can’t waste any time on them, they're not leads as far as I'm concerned"

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We’re all sick of it, collapsing economy, banks refusing to lend us money on the grounds that they can’t trust us (banks don’t seem to get irony), politicians telling us to trust them, all the while claiming bath plugs and scatter cushions on their expenses...
Continue reading "Reasons to be cheerful, 1,2,3…"