One FT columnist I like reading when waiting in corporate receptions is Lucy Kellaway. She recently riffed typically irreverent thoughts on messages to give long standing clients.

I was intrigued to see her document what she considered the four things that clients valued from their suppliers above all else:

• experience
• mastery of subject matter
• diligence
• punctuality

A thought provoking quartet. Two issues immediately struck me. Introspectively, how do I myself stack up on these. Then the real kicker was … are they really the top four?

No empathy? Whither understanding? And what about problem solving?

An interesting excerise would surely be to ask your clients what they value. Using Lucy’s four as a jumping off point these could be uncovered fairly easily. Whatever they say in response you can then make plans to ensure that you shine in such areas.

Louis Theroux and his Wierd Weekends. Over a decade ago he poked his nose in the world of tv shopping channels, centring on an American station in Tampa.

Our first exposure was to a room full of presenters, fully pumped and ready to rock. One guy was pitching magnets for health and sleep purposes. When Louis raised his vocal eyebrow with a knowing chuckle, the snap back was instant; they’d once sold $1m in one day. Whoa!

The next guy was about to promote a cleaning product. “What’s Oxy Clean?” Louis quizzed, bringing the again instant response, “it’s a cleaner that works so you don’t have to!”

Even in this fleeting moment of docu-telly, I couldn’t help wondering just how many salespeople could realy rattle off such apt retorts when put on the spot like that about their own wares.

Much of the show was a lesson in how to do a presentation as Louis grew increasingly nervous over his own product pitch live on air (eventually for a paper shredder) for the film’s denouement.

Here’s a flavour of the (terrific) tips from the experts:

• Flash is cash, make it look colourful
• People buy belief in the person
• Bring it to life, make it exciting and fun
• Preparation of materials/props and verbal out-loud practice were rigorous
• Referring to products’ full model names/numbers makes you look like an expert
• Describe your product, say what it looks like, then what it does and how it helps quick quick, then bang into the demo
• Get quickly into the demo, cut down all chat to almost zero before pressing any buttons

And don’t think that this is just typical American over-the-top zany dross. One mentor was an English guy who’d been there six years, with even the usually cynical Louis moved to acclaim his skill.

With a spate of Facebook related horrors involving crimes against children hitting the London press these past few days, one news show talking head stated a remarkable stat.

Dr Aric Sigman mentioned a formula suggesting that for every one hour of time a child spends on social networking sites, they miss out on half-an-hour of real face-to-face interaction.

When I thought about it in sales terms, this was startling.

I’ve often been in salesrooms where reps, whether consciously or not, bury themselves in their email under the illusion that they are making something happen. I know how long it can take to craft winning prose that you consider spelbinding for your prospect. It can be a very long time.

Yet anyone else looking in will doubtless question just how much of an impact what is written will make. In the context of the time taken on it, the answer can often render the initial effort redundant.

So is a similar formula at play in sales?

For each hour spent agonising over an email response, aren’t you missing out on the impact that an amount of real-life interaction would bring?

I suspect so. And I’d go further. I bet that a smaller amount of non-screen communication would have significantly greater punch than over double that computer-tied time.

Of course, there are times when you simply must put something in writing. But I sense we’re veering too much into overload here and could do with reining in the temptation to email. Especially when decisions are only really influenced on the phone or in front of someone.

I landed at an airport just now and after taxi-ing to the terminal, there was a delay as the plane had parked beyond where the mechanical walkway could reach. I then experienced much jolting around as a tug tried to shimmy the plane in position.

It reminded me of an experiment I did when around eleven at school. We took a newtonometer, put the hook on a stool leg, and pulled. Our conclusion was that it takes way more energy to start the pulling process than it does to keep the momentum of the pull going.

Our tug battled with such forces on the tarmac.

Quite by chance, at the same time I was reading a short chapter of a book entitled  ”how can a foot in the door lead to great strides”. Would you believe it. Offering a prospect first the chance to make a small purchase, one significantly smaller than a large one you may really wish to sell, hugely increases your likelihood of later big-ticket success.

The stats were compelling. Such an approach improved the effectiveness of one request from a lowly 17% acceptance, to a whopping 76% hit-rate. And another boasted a 22% to 53% rise.

The authors termed it a “commitment- and consistency-based strategy”.

I was recently reminded of a relaxing social London Sunday in the pub with a pal. I was given a neat refresher of the power of delegation and its ramifications for sales campaigns.

My friend went through a decade of managing pubs and as such was required to conduct regular stock checks. They were unannounced so as to verify whether any money was illicitly being syphoned off. Yet he alone in his company had never conducted one. He was potentially ‘exposed’ when someone realised that he didn’t know how to use the internal back-office computer system. Yet all his outlets had a clean bill of health.

People wondered how this could be the case as surely if unchecked, cash disappears from retail tills at an alarming rate?

The answer set him well above his peers. He’d long decided that such a task was not for him, so always created an unofficial post within his team of pub managers (typically totalling a dozen in his industry I’m told). The role was Best-Practice Manager. It didn’t provide any extra cash, but was positioned as giving more kudos and responsibility to the person in the job. And a guarantee that they’d always be “looked after” through any turns for the worse. Of the tasks required in such a role, one was to go around the other bars and check their cash through those surprise stock-takes. Furthermore, the individuals always seemed to love the role and were more than happy to do it.

As solution sellers we are always trying to schedule, shape and ship people. Project managing them to gain the most impact on our campaigns can experience barriers. I often see people that either could, or are meant to, help the cause insanely duck out of providing support. Perhaps appointing our own person into such a Best-Practice Manager role or aligned/adapted position could work wonders…

The in-flight magazine. Seldom can a genre of publications be more instructive in how not to construct a good read than these.

So it was with delight that I happened across the blue-skied, still winter’s day of a decent article. Advertising colossus TBWA’s worldwide create director, JoBurger John Hunt writes about The Art Of The Idea. This represents something that just about every firm I know battles with. Everyone wants “ideas”, but few make any headway in providing an environment that results in producing good ones. He believes he has answers, based on his experience of countless meetings and systems all geared towards idea generation (in his case inside the context of creating ad campaigns).

His starting point is a belter. Every salesperson will recognise this feeling from their own plentiful pitches and presentations;

“One of my first and most important observations was that there are sunrise people and sunset people. It happens in every room, every meeting. The room divides into these two categories: people with positive inclinations versus the negative.”

He expands,

“A sunriser gives out energy, a sunsetter sucks it away… If you want ideas to happen [you must] hunt positive people.”

Substitute the word ‘ideas’ for ’sales’ and it all sounds so clear. My only gripe here is that I feel his metaphor is slightly misplaced - everyone I know that bestows the energy described would see themselves more akin to having sunset virtues rather than sunrise, in the sense of their traditionally understood evocations.

Ways of achieving this ‘hunt’ recommended I guess are expected to flow from reading the full tome. The gist of a tiny extract shared was that the doors open to coming up with ideas are shockingly scarce. This strangulation must be shattered. By way of example;

“Corporate behaviour continually reinforces the incredibly stupid notion that the more senior the person, the more prone they are to having big ideas.”

When selling, you can often instinctively label sunrise or sunset tags for each person involved. We could all focus more on supporting the sunrisers and on manoeuvring them to counter the sunsetters.

One other point comes from his sign-off “4 essential things to help creativiy flourish”. People that share excitement of these could well be your greatest asset within your prospect:

1. don’t be scared
2. be wary of habit
3. stay open to the universe
4. be adventurous

A delightful morning had me facilitating a workshop aimed at understanding different potential funding agencies’ viewpoints. The venture support varied among the six participants, from a few hundred thousand dollars, right through to multi-millions.

One session looked at what business plans must exhibit for them to feel comfortable that success will more likely follow. This is somewhat elusive, as the words of one delegate confirmed by sharing that only 1 in 10 proposals they receive make it past just the very first screening process.

The result of the brainstorm was this watch-list of ten items:

• Entrepreneur Ownership (& involvement)
• (Secured) Market Access
• Applicant Passion
• Management skills & Technical expertise
• Sustainability (also incorporating Adaptability)
• Commercial viability
• Adequate Funding Requested
• Co-ordinated Development Resource
• Business Support in-place (to help internal systems)
• Promoters On Board (3rd parties to drive external alliances)

Another fascinating insight into the kinds of things business plans (and by association many a sales proposal) must consider.

Without going into potentially incriminating detail, I saw something quite remarkable in the  wardrobe of a young lady recently.

It was a sheet of paper stuck onto the inner mirror, revealed when she opened the door.

In a huge font size, arranged neatly in a pair of columns, were numbers. In total there were fourteen. They started, top-left, with a figure in blazing deep red (I, of course, couldn’t possibly betray the actual number, suffice to say that it was an amount in kgs). Further figures zig-zagged down in increments of half a kilo until the final one, bottom-right, in a temptingly luscious green.

The top three numbers all had a date scribbled next to their respective printout marker.

I naturally had to delve deeper. It was her way of measuring herself against the goal of getting in better shape.

The colours were her idea of showing up the pleasing journey (using traffic light style calibrations all the way through so that in fact each number was slightly different throughout the overall red-to-green transformation).

It was an impressive sight. As an aside, I wonder whether the sheet would have been better placed elsewhere? Yes, the wardrobe may be opened every day, ensuring regular viewing, but what about being on the bathroom mirror, or fridge door for instance?

Every salesperson probably knows that they should construct scoreboards that chart their personal progress. In how many sales offices that you’ve been in have you seen such a simple demonstration of personal targets? I have to say that in all my travels around sales rooms, their appearance is so rare as to render them practically extinct.

To those that say something like ‘it’s on my computer’, perhaps you’re missing the point. Surely only where a stark unavoidable obtrusive omnipresent message is displayed can it make the impact desired.

England’s great hope, Italian Fabio Capello, offered yet more insight into his (hugely successful) management style through a Telegraph interview. Whilst a lengthy features piece, at least six techniques can be gleaned that many a sales manager could build upon:

Environment & Standards

Everyone knows explicitly what is expected of them, and the man himself hits such high standards day in, day out by way of example. As someone with intimate experience of this notes, he conveys this by being,

“just himself, that’s how the best ones do it. They don’t do it with words. They do it with actions.”

Suppress Emotion

A sacrosanct routine is that, when the players come in at half-time, for the first few minutes he insists that no one speaks. Silence and reflection lasts three minutes. Then, only once the excitement and distraction of drink or injury subsides, plans are made.

His Winning Mentality

One Italian manager once told him this:

“Boss, I can speak with you?” one player said to him. “I am training every day very good, my life is perfect with my wife, I eat good. Sometime I stay on the bench, sometimes the stand. Why?” “You want to know why?” “Tell me.” “Because I want to win.” ‘ Capello grins. ‘All managers want to win,’ he says.

Unleash True Potential

He cannot abide people not performing to their potential, and seeks to find a remedy.

‘This for me is no good. Sometimes you don’t understand why. All the managers, this is one of the terrible things about this job: “Why? Why?”

Continual Learning

He seems driven by this, as evidenced by reading up on ice hockey techniques, despite his track record and age.

Always Push Yourself

At the end of an exhausting season, he sensed a training session begin to drift into the motions.

Capello stopped the training session. ‘Don’t waste my day,’ he told the players. ‘Because the standard that you’re doing at the moment is unacceptable. Never, ever waste a day in professional football.’

I spent twenty minutes R&R last night reading the always entertaining AA Gill review a recently opened London foodie haunt. It was partly because a friend had recommended it to me, and also due to a reverence for the author’s review ethos.

Years of dining out has led me to identify meals that give you an unspun, naked insight into any eaterie. Fish ‘n Chips in a London gastropub, Eggs Benedict in a Cape Town brunch bar. That sort of thing. And now I learn that,

“This is what they call in the catering trade an attitude dish. You may not want to eat it, but it tells you something about the restaurant, about where the kitchen is coming from, how they want to be perceived.”

The extra angle here that also interests me is the concept of not necessarily wanting to eat it, but if you do then you really uncover what’s going on in their heads.

Of course, it’s not a giant leap in logic to think of all those things that we as salespeople must do (in the form of both deed and document) and wonder what “attitude” they betray.

What does, for instance, your Proposal say about you? Does it truly represent you as you want it to? How do your customers think it matches up? What do they feel it reveals?

Knowing the attitude dishes that you can serve up, and nailing their impact, indeed seems a worthwhile pursuit.