One Minute Pause no 29
When we are selling our products or services to people, we are often after the big ticket sale - expensive purchases, large contracts, long periods of consultancy, complicated projects.
The rewards are great, but there’s a downside - the bigger and more complicated the sale, the harder it can be for prospective […]

One Minute Pause no 28
Imagine you are at a dinner party.
You’ve had a glass of wine, and you get into a friendly argument with your mate Greg.
The argument continues for 10 minutes and you’re both enjoying it.
The host calls you all to the table and you carry on talking to another […]

One Minute Pause no 26
Today, marketing people and business owners come under fire from consumers for “new age” marketing and sales techniques that are deemed as too intrusive.
But I don’t think marketing or selling techniques have changed that much at all in the past 200 years or probably 2000 years.
Here’s a couple of examples:
PESTER POWER
One […]

One Minute Pause no 23
A good argument at work, around a dinner table or at the pub seems to be a national past time.
But what strikes me is that winning an argument, and persuading the other party to come around to your way of thinking, are two completely different things.
During arguments people can get railroaded […]

One Minute Pause No 24
One balmy night in Melbourne I was one of 12,000 people who went along to see Dr John Gray give a presentation.
Gray, author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” had been held up at the airport.
Gray’s warm-up guy had run out of material 10 minutes ago, […]

One Minute Pause no 25
The concept of online grocery shopping is confusing to some of Sainsbury’s loyal consumer base.
Which is why uptake of the service has been slower than expected - easier to nip down and queue up for the weekly shopping.
So the clever bods at Sainsbury’s boiled down the concept of online […]

One Minute Pause no 22
One of the basic causes of nerves when standing up to present is the thought that one or two people in the audience are going to ask you a difficult question, or be in some way noisy or troublesome.
Prior to the presentation it is common to react by getting anxious that […]

One Minute Pause no 21
About one out of every five people we train in presentation or sales skills is a detail junkie.
They are afflicted with detailitis: a common inflammation of the waffle gland.
This is the gland that gives them the urge to keep “waffling”, and carrying on in exorbitant detail.
If that’s you or someone […]

One Minute Pause no 20
I did a course in comedy last year, conquering my biggest fear. It is taught by a bloke called Logan Murray, and it’s very good.
Dedicate 6 weekends and you learn how to do 5 minutes of stand-up in front of a live audience (http://snipurl.com/com_course).
Logan had a saying that […]

One Minute Pause no 19
I am writing this OMP sitting on a train on the way back from Manchester after meeting two lovely people from a company called SMRS, located in a place called The Triangle.
Two Mancunians told me, without provocation, that The Triangle was formerly the site that was bombed about 10 […]