Real Skills for Virtual Presentations

by George Pastidis

Few years ago, whenever I would feel like meeting with or presenting to a customer, I would head to the airport, texting my manager on the way to. Things are changing though. Technology evolves, money shrinks, travel is limited. Now, many companies are shifting their internal and external meetings, presentations, trainings, conferences to virtual formats. read more…

Are you building a sales babel?

by George Pastidis

Babel

  1. : a city in Shinar where the building of a tower is held in Genesis to have been halted by the confusion of tongues
  2. : often not capitalized
    a :  a confusion of sounds or voices
    b :  a scene of noise or confusion

                                                                                         Merriam-Webster definition

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God bless the rookies

George Pastidis hosts Leonidas Athanasiadis  

Retail selling is an interesting thing with lots of tragicomic stories. My friend and colleague Leonidas Athanasiadis shared one of them while we were running together last Sunday morning. It was a real gem and I encouraged him to put it in writing so I can share with you all: read more…

e-Learning or Traditional Training?

by George Pastidis

Any breakthrough technology is usually followed by super-optimistic statements bragging about the upcoming e-dreams, technophobic laggards that are terrified and resist like crazy and at last a fair compromise and good balance between the technological “miracles” and the ones that are really useful and make sense. read more…

“Customer is always right. Is he really?”

by George Pastidis

My mother used to have a small toyshop in our neighborhood for few decades. I was doing everything there. Playing, asking for pocket money when my mom was too busy to interrogate me, studying in the back of the shop, helping her from time to time, you name it. One line that I heard her telling me again and again was “customer is always right”. read more…

New Year resolutions on Key Account management

by George Pastidis

2016 is here. So is KPIs. Sales turnover, profit margin, order to cash, product mix, you name it, are here to be achieved. We are here too and we are achievers. Once again, we need to excel and outperform and the one and only way to make this happen is to reshuffle our cards, change, adapt, innovate, develop personally. When it comes to managing Key Accounts, this need is twice as big due to the undergoing changes in this area. read more…

Can we turn the Sellers & CRM relationship to a love story with happy end?

by George Pastidis

Who loves you baby?”  That was the favorite line of Kojak, performed by the famous Telly Savalas. Kojak loved asking this rhetoric question to good looking girls, for answering right away himself “I love ya baby, I love ya”. Well, no seller will ever tell Kojak’s line to CRM. Because no seller loves CRM. Because sales people dislike CRM big time. But why? Why sales people can’t stand something made for helping them? Why the typical picture in most of the sales organizations when it comes to CRM tools, is lack of engagement, not sufficient data input, outdated entries and seniors that are supposed to sponsor it being the lowest contributors? Why? read more…