As I just wrote to the lady that informed me, my inclusion in the 20 Great Sales Blogs list made me happily glow from their warm hug of recognition.

It seems many of my co-nominees overtly have books to promote. Perhaps I’m missing a trick here?!

I’m now mildly embarrassed to admit that the only one of the other 19 I’ve ever read is the Selling Power mag’s. So I better get surfing.

I’m surprised that neither Jill Konrath’s nor Ari Galper’s isn’t on there too. What I like about them is that they focus on one single element of the job (namely selling to big companies and cold-calling respectively). Despite my occasional struggle with their Americana, they’re both excellent.

I’d like to do the same thing in a way that appeals to just the small number of solution selling reps that might actually want to be CEO one day. That’s the psychic income altruism I take pride in.

The other purpose of my blogging beyond this, is so that anyone considering doing business with me may gain true insight into how I think. If we’re kindred souls, I explain to them, then they’ll easily know after just ten minutes or so’s reading. And then we might just share the foundation for a terrific, fruitful relationship.

I really must try and make this my last football post for a while. I need to move on!

Nevertheless, the 38th minute goal that was incorrectly not allowed will be known to just about every single person on the planet by now in the England Germany last 16 World Cup clash.

My German friends are loving the irony of course. In 1966, England were awarded a goal that looked to not cross the goal-line. It practically won the trophy.  Every time a dodgy goal is contested, the Germans refer to it as a Wembley goal, often these days just known as that goal.

(Here’s a link to the translated Wikipedia page, Tor being German for Goal with new expressions already developing, such as Inverse Wembley, Revenge for Wembley & Wembley Bloemfontein.)

It made me painfully remember sales that I’d been given the nod for. Then inexplicably had them taken from me. Such injustices tend to come in one of three flavours.

competition reacting to drop their price through the floor

nobbling of the decision outside the Boardroom by a disgruntled buyer

the (perhaps separate) negotiation team making a mess of things

Avoid suffering ignominy at the hands of your own Wembley Goal experience. Make sure you manage each one of these aforementioned trio of traps, way in advance.

Another football-related musing. Sorry. I’m still hurting.

Holding midfielders. The talk of the tournament as Brazil’s coach Dunga deploys two of them. Amazingly devastatingly effective, they even provide huge attacking impetus.

Former England internationals on pundit duty in S Africa, John Barnes and Gary Mabbutt, couldn’t stop talking about this one after Brazil demolished Chile to slide into the Quarters. I’ve celebrated this already, calling it the 6-6 formation.

Between them and their Nigerian colleague Daniel Amokachi, they rattled off several holding midfielders that successful teams were built around. Like Essien and Mikel at Chelsea right now. How Real Madrid collapsed once Makele was shipped out to Chelsea, after misguidedly being perceived as over-valued in the galaticos era. Even Palacios helping Spurs reach the Champions League this season.

And that issue of value came up. Barnes mentioned that England’s best player, Gerrard, could play there. But we’d all feel that it would be a “waste”. In his view, the English game under-values this most important of positions in today’s game.

It reminded me of Eric Cantona’s dismissive description once he’d been booted out the French set-up of Deschamps; nothing more than a “water-carrier”. He then captained them to World Cup glory.

Who’s your unsung hero? The one that stops opponents attacking, that launches and supports your own offensives? Whether in your own sales team or client-side, maybe it’s time to acknowledge their true value too?

I’m trying to move on from England’s disastrous World Cup. Please bear with me during this difficult time. Still stuck in the half-Nelson of despair, I was yesterday discussing formations and flexibility.

The second time England were ever humiliated was a double thrashing at the hands of Hungary. It seemed England learned nothing from that first embarrassment in Belo Horizonte, 1950 (despite apparently having virtually all of the play). The Magyars changed the game, inventing the sport as we now know it. They claim they were robbed of their deserved 1954 World Cup victory by the Germanic underhand.

It took a few years, but England adopted the winning tactics of our European foes. Chief among our adaptations involved the schemer.

Although I wasn’t around then, I understand this was a type of player that came in from the wing to instead operate in an arena I guess nowadays called ‘the hole’. It meant that England under Ramsay in ‘66 could be “wingless wonders”, progressing at that time into a 4-4-2 formation.

Further evolution led to us for a decade embracing the libero come Italia 90. A Beckenbauer personification, this was an extra central defender in advance of the understood sweeper position that provided forward momentum with schemer-style grace.

England’s  game-changing schemer is surely Steven Gerrard. Yet somehow manager Fabio Capello contrived to play him far removed from any such role. Perhaps time to re-evaluate my thoughts on his philosophy and management?

It reminds me of sales situations I’ve been in where someone is ideally suited to a specific function (usually across several deals in fact) yet have been put in a hidden, secure pigeon-hole by the boss. Momentum either never gets going or is lost completely.

If there’s a schemer in your midst, cherish them, and let them shine.

Arh, Kylie. Kylie, Kylie, Kylie. On the interview milkround to promote her latest album she truly shone in her Sky News outing. With the World Cup in full swing, football came up. It seems she watches.

The questioner asked if she knew what the offside rule was. It’s a guy thing. We joke that no girl knows it. It’s part of our battle of the sexes play. Although gamely trying to explain, she didn’t quite get anywhere near it. Then, chuckling, she challenged her interviewer,

Okay in ten seconds tell me the offside rule… Go!

He stumbled worse than she had! She milked the moment. Lovely. Instantly I blurted out my explanation:

be no farther forward than level with the penultimate player (defender or attacker)

But then again, I did qualify as a ref aged 14.

What a great point Kylie’s exchange made though. Most solution selling involves getting complex points across with stunning simplicity.

• What’s your most commonly required point?
• What’s the most difficult one to get across?
• What’s the most complicated?

Especially if the answer to each is the same one, then how do you get it across in ten seconds?

Ten seconds is a surprisingly long time. Normal conversation can hear you splurt out 200 words. Presentation speech can reduce this by upto half. So that’s anywhere between 15 and 30 words in those ten seconds.

Sit down, write your point out in these many words.

Then practise them out loud. Imagine you’re in front of Kylie.

Make sure you impress her. She wants you to.

A friend of mine is part of Cisco’s delivery team. His insights showed how salesteams are viewed the same the world over.

He grumbled along about how their sales people were notorious for informally asking for help, expecting it to be done “by tomorrow”, then not speaking to them for the next six months, before another similar request was made with the same outrageous expectation.

He went on to say he spent much of his time recalibrating the expectations of customers. Apparently there’s often a difference between what they thought they’d signed up for and what was being delivered. How strange.

Usually amendments were done as favours. These had a tendency to get out of hand. Avoidable grief afflicted both sides.

He himself got so fed up with this, that he started to adopt a system where each time something beyond the signed-off scope was wanted, the customer must submit a “change request”. This way, he believed, it was truly “keeping the client honest”. So much so that in one example he gave me of a small project, an initial $150k contract smoothly expanded into a $350k deal, with both parties happy.

It seems a good idea. I fear though for its implementation. Of course, salespeople are renowned for their lack of documentation, and this may prevent another such procedure from being successfully taken up.

What’s the sales department equivalent of a football coach?

The obvious answer is the boss, the CSO, the sales manager.

Yet on further thought, it is more typically someone else on the sidelines. Not necessarily owning top-line responsibility, even small sales outfits can often have an informal role filled by a pivotal personality that consults, cajoles and coaches those in the field.

Then there are those that support the quota carriers. From ’sales ops managers’ to pre-sales consultants there’s a long list of possibles.

Is there a coach supporting you?

One of many reasons put forward for England’s hapless World cup campaign is the lack of UEFA-qualified coaches. According to one journalist, here are the numbers of such UEFA badge holders among five nations.

Germany 34,970

Italy 29,420

Spain 23,995

France 17,588

England 2,769

So the Germans have over ten-times the coaches in England. It goes without saying that the success each of the four countries listed first here can boast is wildly greater than England’s.

Is the same true in sales? Does an effective coaching resource deliver greater success? I believe the answer is a firm yes. So why can’t more sales teams call on such expertise?

Not one given to spending time with American sport, I was intrigued to see basketballer Kobe Bryant enthuse about football during a CNN interview in S Africa at the World Cup. An avid AC Milan fan, he also played in goal as a lad.

He’s just won a fifth championship. When asked how it happened, for a super-paid superstar his answer was fairly humble. It was along these lines:

winning a championship is all about how you come together as a team

I know many a salesperson who’ll groan at that. Conflicting agendas, back-stabbing, disappearing resource. And that’s just in the deal team.

Here’s a pair of facts presently emblazoned across screens in the UK’s aftermath of the new (coalition) Government’s emergency budget:

£952 Billion - total current debt

£155 Billion - current deficit

The figures are of eye-watering worry. Britain owes almost One Trillion pounds Sterling. Staggeringly, that’s over half of total annual output. The second number is the difference between what the State generates in taxes and what it borrows. It’s in runaway negative territory.

All sides agree on the scale of the problem. Left and Right differ of course, on both the true culprit and the remedy. The new occupants of power blame the previous incumbent’s profligacy way more than the credit crunch.

In the immediate quest to quickly balance the books, the new PM and his Deputy today wrote a letter to all public sector workers. It highlights the “spending challenge” and asks for help. Here’s paragraph four;

We want you to help us find those savings, so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontline of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

This feels a bold move. Inevitably dismissed by its critics as a gimmick, it might though just yield dividends. Cuts are coming, so why not properly manage that painful process.

Imagine you are in an account management position. You sense your rewards are about to reduce, maybe even disappear. Who’s on your ‘frontline’? Could they suggest ways ahead that lessen your potential losses?

On Sky News Deputy PM Clegg was quizzed by Mark Longhurst. A précis follows:

People who know this the best are not civil servants or politicians in Whitehall but those on the front line, such as nurses, we must square that circle to make savings whilst protecting front line services

The interviewer then suggested that everyone will simply say ‘make cuts elsewhere’,

People tell us privately you can save money by getting rid of that form or target, you can save money by removing that layer of (NHS) bureaucracy. It can all be done anonymously. Yes, some may not be workable, unable to copy from one place to another but ideas are out there.

Adapting this philosophy may well provide a distinguished framework for your next (perhaps even impromptu) client-side major account review.

One word for today;

Enjoyment

Yesterday saw England comfortably put Australia to the sword. Building on their awesome championship winning Twenty20 World Cup campaign, they put to bed the utter shambles that was last year’s belittling at the hands of the old foe in the 50-over form.

As our cricketers celebrated in the middle, the winning runs coinciding with a delightful century from wonderboy Eoin Morgan, the camera panned up to the changing room. Just inside, right next to the door, the last thing you see as you walk out to the middle, there was a large sign. About two foot long, it looked like a cardboard poster put up especially for the occasion rather than for usual occupants Hampshire (due to its colours co-ordinating with the current England livery and obvious tacks seemingly holding it only temporarily in place). On a dark blue background, in white capital letters was that single word; ENJOYMENT.

Given the tensions apparently strangling the England footballers at the World Cup this first week in South Africa, it’s a neat reminder that whatever you do, enjoying it should be a prime emotion. And that surely applies as equally to selling as it does to sport.