Thursday, April 17, 2008

A Hug and a Laugh

My new favorite blog is quickly becoming Garth’s World from Jigsaw’s “fully vested” co-founder Garth Moulton. His posts are full of valuable sales insight, no BS straight talk, and a heck of a lot of humor. Today he recommends that you give your customer support people a hug because “they will be cleaning up on all the promises you made to get that deal to drop in March.” Here are a few gems from some of his recent posts:

There’s Gold in Them Hills: “If you just grab a list and start “smiling and dialing” then you are a moron and will not make it to your next sales gig anyway.”

Billy’s First Sales Meeting: “It doesn’t matter if you shotgunned 12 beers at your buddy’s lake house on Saturday, stayed up all night with your kid’s mad case of whooping cough, or walked away from a ten car pile-up on the freeway before the meeting. You the person is just a distraction in the 20 minutes you have to get your point across, so save it for drinks after the formal meeting is over.”

Two Guys in a Hot Tub (truly a classic!): “All those guys talk the talk, have “deals,” take up tons of support resources and executive time, but in the end all you have is a bunch of hot air to show for it. Sales guys without a quota. Two guys in a hot tub.”

Quater End Madness - 5 Tips for Non-Sales People (this one stung!): “5- Marketing people: Now is not the time to ask salespeople for references or what they think about the latest webinar. We don’t even have time to check out the new intern. How about a well placed Public Relations moment (like our company just named “master of the universe” by Gartner) that I can share with my prospect?”

So if you’re in sales and need an occasional laugh, be sure to sign up for the Garth’s World RSS feed. While you’re at it, you might also want to sign up for Jigsaw if you haven’t already. It’s a fantastic service for sales and marketing.

posted by Darren Cunningham at 4:01 pm

Comments

Garth Moulton

Posted on 18th April, 2008

Darren-
You’re too kind! Please don’t let my Marketing comments sting too much, I bust on everyone that isn’t a salesperson. Including myself. And besides- you got LucidEra named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner, which qualifies under my ways for marketing to help sales at Quarter End!

I also loved the Red Sox post by Nate Bride a few weeks ago- what is the OBP metric of sales, anyway? I would hire Manny at Jigsaw in a minute…