sales, marketing, processes and lemmings
By brendan at 21 September, 2011, 1:29 pm
A popular misconception about Lemmings is that every once and a while, they all suddenly run off a cliff and commit suicide. Unfortunately, its not a misconception when talking about sales & marketing processes in a professional services environment. As I’ve mentioned before, in any organisation, there is generally only 6 core Tactical Sales & [...]
Read More >>Ignoring your emails
By brendan at 25 July, 2011, 3:48 pm
Everyday I ignore your emails. Everyday I receive around 100 emails to my newsletter mailbox. I sign up for anything that takes my fancy, but mostly around technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, but occasionally around personal interests such as kayaking and food. At the end of the workday, I browse the newsletter mailbox fairly quickly, to [...]
Read More >>wanna get lucky?
By brendan at 29 June, 2010, 8:59 pm
So at a recent Churchill Club function in our Innovation thinking stream, we ran fascinating event Luck. As part of the panel, we brought up a chap called Jason Bresnehan from Tasmania to talk. Jason is a corporate advisor who last year decided to start writing articles about becoming luckier. Jason had started to wonder [...]
Read More >>Dont go to networking events, if you want to build a great network
By brendan at 7 June, 2010, 5:50 pm
The two weeks or so ago I took part in a panel session on Networking for CIOs. It was an interesting conversation although it pretty much centred around event attendance and using social networking tools like LinkedIn. At the end of the session, as I reflected on what had come out of it, I was [...]
Read More >>6 tips for “un-networking”
By brendan at 27 May, 2010, 5:48 pm
Imagine this scenario…. You go to a networking event, hovering at the edges of the crowd , desperately searching for someone you know, so you can chat and relax. Succumbing to the pressure to “network” you give up and introduce yourself to a nearby stranger, who is also standing by themselves. To your disappointment your [...]
Read More >>Does Commission Only sales actually work?
By brendan at 3 March, 2010, 9:37 pm
Quite regularly I get offered commission only sales work. Rarely though its ever phrased that way. Normally its a discussion about how exciting and lucrative the opportunity is with a statement at the end like “we don’t pay retainers though”. Instead there is a discussion around “spotters fees”, “trailing revenues”, “your margin” or being “looked [...]
Read More >>What great questions have you got?
By brendan at 22 February, 2010, 8:54 pm
My son, like many children, had his birthday around the cutoff date for entry into Primary school. So my wife and I had a choice “do we send him a little earlier, or a little late. My position on the matter was “Give me one good reason we should hold him back”. And we couldn’t [...]
Read More >>Time & Materials V’s Fixed Price billing
By brendan at 27 January, 2010, 12:11 pm
Just before Xmas I had one of my coffee/mentoring sessions with a vibrant young Victorian entrepreneur and an interesting question came up around how she should invoice her services. Although not an expert in the area of pricing models (I generally recommend Jon Manning of Sans Prix for some hard core consulting), I have owned [...]
Read More >>What would a Sales 101 course look like?
By brendan at 18 January, 2010, 6:14 pm
Something that drives me mad is that in my humble opinion, our Universities are undermining the success of Australian business. I say this because from my observation the number one skill required for success in business, regardless of profession, is the ability to sell. To sell your product, yourself as the right candidate for the [...]
Read More >>A Process Approach to Effectively Managing Sales & Marketing
By brendan at 2 October, 2009, 10:53 am
After a long struggle, I now have real ‘cut-through’ in my sales and marketing processes. I’ll tell you the secret…[ Note I wrote this 18 months ago, but only just found it again] When I looked at marketing texts, they tell me that marketing is about product, price, placement and promotion. Unfortunately, this hasn’t ever [...]
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