Dress Shoes are dead?

I have been looking for a pair of wingtips. I settled for some standard black shoes today after searching Hays for a month or so. When sales people showed me "Dress Shoes" it was amazing what people call dress shoes. Shoes I would not even wear in some casual situations.

OK maybe I have some kind of shoe complex. And maybe I look often at what types of shoes people wear. Sure, I want to be comfortable, but style does not have to suffer?

Appearance is important in sales. Both being too overdressed or too under dressed can be a hindrance. Dress for the situation. Always have freshly pressed clothes. Don't be afraid of the dry cleaners and when it is time to throw away the worn out shirt, sooner than later is the way to go.

A cheer to the Stuart Marketing Machine

Stuart put together another great promotion called the Extreme Office Makeover. Check it out at

http://www.itmatters.ca/extreme.php

It takes alot to put these together. Vendor support, chamber support, marketing and lots of followup.

Good work Stuart!

Lesson not learned?

Had another sales person visit me yesterday to sell his wares. First of all was traveling from 1/2 way across the US. Did not verify the appointment till the day before. Was late from the time we agreed on. Then presented what he thought was interesting, not by asking questions of the audience what we were looking for.

Another point that I saw that was adverse to selling was mentioning the competition. This rep did so by name and by price. I will be honest, there was little quality or service differences. So Now I have the competition and some of their values? Probably not a good idea to give these things away.

Once again, stick to the basics of sales. By no means do I feel that I am even close to the top of sales people I have seen, however the good ones always follow simple methods that are continually rewarded.

Sell on!

Are you a simplicator or a complicator?

I had a chance work with some technical programmers today. In my opinion, what the customer wanted was really simple. A couple of basic requirements. Other than that KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

However my friends in programming complicated things beyond reason. Asking what if's that were off the chart. Introducing more complications to their work to then later tell me they couldn't do it. (Yet it was their idea in the first place)

This lead me to the sales process. When you sell do you make the solution understandable and simple or complicate the whole issue? Clearly you do want to meet the expectations and not over sell the solution, yet provide a complete picture without complicating the sale.

Strength finder 2.0

So I finished my homework for HTG. The results of Strength Finder were less than psychic. Or at not for me. Maybe because of some of my skills I can see these. What it found was

Futuristic
Competition
Individualization
Strategic
Activator

I have decided that I need a Weakness Finder 2.0 I do well at seeing the things I do well. Its the things I don't do well I could use more help with. I have Jenifer at home for the weaknesses. I think some days she finds it in her job description in pointing out my weaknesses.

Dishwasher loading
Picking up after myself
listening
patience
Prioritizing her tasks

Maybe I should bring Jenifer into work as a Weakness consultant.

Our first parent teacher conference

I think everyone is aware of my run in's with the education system. So I was worried about going to the parent teacher conference. Good news...No bad news!

We learned that Caden gets along with others, is social and has no behavior issues (he only has those at home).

Sure, he needs some improvement using scissors, and fine motor skills.

Best part to me is those are things he can learn and will come with time. You can't teach personality.

Creativity, is it dead?

So in the IT sales business it is important to take the same solution and sell it over and over.

Recently I have watched several TV shows that are lacking creativity.

First is Knight Rider. The new one. I really enjoyed the first one with David Hasselhoff. The high tech stuff, computers and such. Now the new one is so predictable. KITT (The Car) can transform into virtually anything. What is hard about fighting crime if you have a tool that will do anything? Anyway, Michael is after some bad guy that stole some secret. The show has to have a girl in distress, somehow the car has some mechanical issue, there is a "SPY" party. You know, the tux, gambling and dancing. Then the hero comes through and a high speed chase. Pretty much no change in the formula. How boring.

Then is Chuck. Similar story. Geek wants hot girl, Super cool spy gets hot girl. Geek disappointed. There is the "SPY" party, and Geeks saves the day. HOW BORING

OH yea, I forgot that most of these people have a way of doing things that no one could ever possibly do. You know get blown up and live, jump 3 stories and run and know some type of karate that beats everyone.

And pretty much every show these days has some type of technology that is impossible. Holographs, cars that talk, voice recognition that works, artificial intelligence and so on.

So I am a bit down on entertainment today. I will just turn on my 3d glasses and enter the holadeck.

Clearly the networks have good marketing, I have wasted hours on their terrible television.