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Thursday 28 July 2011

Sales Boot Camp at TACK TMI Congress 2011- A time for ' Old Lamps for New' for a change?

('Your'e in the Army now" Delegates working at the Sales Boot Camp in Vilnius)

Probably the first time I became consciously aware of a thing called ‘selling’ was as a child when I was taken to see a Christmas panto based on the story from the book of One thousand and one nights - ALADDIN.


The sorcerer in the story gets his hands on the precious old lamp and its Genii by tricking Aladdin's wife, who is unaware of the lamp's importance, by offering to exchange "new lamps for old" in the market place.



He orders the Genii of the lamp to take Aladdin’s palace to his home in the Maghreb.
Fortunately, Aladdin retained the magic ring from a previous adventure and was able to summon the lesser jinni. Although the genii of the ring cannot directly undo any of the magic of the genii of the lamp, he is able to transport Aladdin to Maghreb, and help him recover his wife and the lamp and defeat the sorcerer.


The tale has many lessons for sales but one lesson in particular is to appreciate those ‘old things’ that are still very valuable.


The Aladdin tale itself has been made 'new' for example for the next genration through the video game Sonic and the Secret Rings which is considerably based on the story of Aladdin, and both genies appear in the story. The genie of the lamp is the main villain, known in the game as the Erazor Djinn, and the genie of the ring, known in the game as Shahra, appears as Sonic's sidekick and guide through the game.


(Nushi Stach taking Private "Hugh Appeal" through his paces in Sales Drills.)

Likewise, the ring genie is conspicuously less powerful than the lamp genie in the story.

So it is once in a while a good discipline for a Sales Team to take stock and invest in some time-out to get back to the basics of the job (those old sales lamps of great value).

It is good for our sales mind, our sales body and our sales soul.

We can all get a little too proud about the condition of our selling crafts especially if we have been selling for some time. Of course there are the NEW lamps the NEXT ‘BIG’ THING , consultative selling , solution selling, NLP ,strategic account selling plus the latest version of new lamps for old entitled


“ Common sense made complicated programme” from the University of Life.



We all like the next new shiny programmes, products,systems, processes…… yet they are ALL based on the precious old selling lamps based on those fundamentals.


('The theatre of operations' Base Camp Command Room "Theta " at the Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva, Vilnius")



Why? because human nature has not changed so much over the centuries even back to fabled times of Aladdin. We all sell to human beings after all .
The Old Sales Lamps we needed get shiny again at the Worldwide Conference for were the basis for our boot camp programme in Vilnius.


(Sales Boot Camp HQ)


• The Market Place 2011 and beyond.

• RFI /RFP Really Fantastic Proposals in response to requests for proposals.

• How to better leverage your website for your sales.

• How to make effective appointments on the telephone.

• Working with different personalities ( Decision makers and Influencers) using Psychometrics

• Revisiting Your Differentiated Value Proposition – RUPOD

• Selling Internationally – Selling Locally

• After you’ve gone – managing quality

• Selling the Brand – selling the service

If you would be interested in having your own sales boot camp facilitated by TACK to boost you company's sales - contact Mike Davis miked@tack.co.uk



To warm up us up on Day Three of the TMI TACK Congress 2011 we were inspired by the vibrant energy of a Lithuanian dancing troop. Their choreographer then taught all of us a dance routine. This was great fun and a good drill for accelerated learning in the Sales Boot Camp.

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