Carolanne decided to make an investment in Swedish furniture. And pretty soon she was sitting on her living room floor surrounded by cardboard, fiddly connectors, sheets of gleaming white melamine, Allen keys galore and sheets and sheets on iconic instructions. But, despite the instructions (in multiple languages and pictograms), it wasn’t going w...
Read MoreTwo hours later than expected, a large dump truck backed slowly up my driveway. It’s annoying beep-beep-beep back-up alarm making the dogs bark. Once it was in front of the garage doors the bed started to lift and a full cord of firewood cascaded onto my driveway. I now had to shift and stack ½ ton of firewood before I could get my cars out and my...
Read MoreThe delicious whooshing sound as the lid comes away is magical, the little pull-tabs that allow you to prise the product away from its hard, but yet soft, protective packaging is devious, the mathematically designed cutouts and wrappers are ingenious. And yet all of this is designed to happen, after the deal is inked. Why bother?
Read MoreThis is where signatures are placed and money changes hands. When I was in the satellite business, we needed to buy launch insurance for a geostationary satellite. It covered the few minutes it would take to get the satellite into orbit…. just a little bit longer than you can hold your breath hoping that the ten-year, hundred-million-dollar bit of...
Read MoreAt some point in the customer's journey, they will make the decision either to buy or move on. They have gathered the information, weighed it against their particular needs, debated the affordability and return on investment, considered the alternatives and ‘click’ have decided to buy. That decision point can be hard to notice – there is seldom a...
Read MoreNegotiation and the pursuit of happiness… It turns out that just two things are required for happiness: a feeling of control and a sense of connection with other people. And, if you can make people happy and feel connected they tend to buy more. In the sales process, the opportunity for both exists. When it comes to buying, we like to feel in c...
Read MoreAt some point in the sales process, your resellers need to ask their customer if they would like to buy your product. This, in turn, means the customer needs to make a decision – buy or don’t buy. Of course, if you are buying something like gas (or petrol) for your car, there really is no decision – it’s just a habit – there is no buy or don’t buy...
Read MoreThe word started out in Latin - movere (to move), migrated through French - émouvoir (excite) and finally into English – emotion. Isn’t that cool? Emotion and movement are joined at the hip. Without emotion there is no movement, no action and, of course, no deal. Emotion is the brain’s ‘first responder’. It rushes in to assess a situation and infor...
Read MoreCredibility is about 2 two things: first - the customer believes that you will provide what you say you will and second - that your advice will be in their best interest. So they need to trust your product and your advice. In most cases, as a channel manager, you control the product but you don’t control how it will be sold. A great product sold...
Read MoreContact A look across a crowded room, an accidental touch on the subway – the first contact. That connection is just as important in business life as it is in personal life. What do they see, what do they hear, what do they smell (some sales environments are indeed meant to smell – Cinnabon for example – others… less so).
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