December 2, 2005
complex un-selling
My old high-school friend, Hamish, is a very accomplished salesman and SAP consultant. He has a series of posts on his blog, Cardboard Spaceship that he calls “Complex Selling”. It’s about how to sell very complicated things for LOTS of money e.g. SAP software.
He has just written a lovely post on how NOT to do it, citing his own experiences as a recent college graduate in the late 1980s:
Right, so I am let loose with the following tools of the trade: one telephone, a jobbie brown BT standard Viscount usually, and a number of boxes of scabby cards that are full of customer contect details. And I get to sit near a window, which in summer in a Georgian era building in London is a big perk. (Now, I know, everyone out this there is going — Wow! Cluelessness! Some people work things out from first principles, for me at 22, this was a “bitter-experience approach” to the problem.).
btw Hamish is probably the smartest person I know. I remember when he had that job. Sweatshop City. Not fun.
I’m behind on your blog. Sorry about your friend.
Congrats on making the New York TImes with your cartoon. I came for the cartoons but I’m staying for the interesting writing. Speaking of writing I just finished my first novel as part of the http://www.nanowrimo.com experiment. Thanks for linking to me as part of the global microbrand post.
http://www.andyt13.com got a nice traffic spike from that and I think I made a few more connections. Cheers!
AndyT13