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.

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One Response to “complex un-selling”

  1. 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