Gruff Rhys FREE Download

For fans of The Super Furry Animals, go to the following link to get a free download from Gruff's new record.

www.gruffrhys.com

Enjoy

Belle and Sebastion

Check out the short movie on the introduction page of their website:

www.belleandsebastion.com

More Americans at Anfield

So we now have new American owners at Anfield. I think that means the debt has gone but it will apparently take John Henry some time to figure out what he is going to do with the club. He has suggested today that he is not at the club to make money and would question the sanity of anyone who buys into an English club to make money but instead wants to see Liverpool compete at the highest level in world sport. Well, they are going to have to start winning games again if they are to get anywhere near that level. loosing 2-0 to a poor Everton side who are only 3 points but several places above them.

He talked about the newly agreed "financial fair play" regulations

(http://www.uefa.com/uefa/aboutuefa/organisation/executivecommittee/news/newsid=1493078.html)

helping European soccer, where clubs have to work within their means and not spend any more that they make.

Let's see.

I Broke My Wrist

OW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One interesting side affect though; morphine really helps you sleep.

Facebook

Ok, I've done it; I've just joined Facebook. I'm still not sure what it's for but I guess I'll have fun hearing news from the 3 friends I've sent messages to.

Any of you on Facebook? I know Don is 'cause he's one of the 3 friends but not sure about the rest of you (i.e. Brian and The Incredible Mr Ford).

I set a couple of bands into my "likes" section and received numerous "news" messages immediately. I suppose it allows you to have all your interests, favourite bands, authors and other interesting organizations in one site where you can keep an eye on them for new releases.

Let's see what happens.

Walk On From Liverpool FC

I spotted this YouTube video in the NME website this week:

http://www.nme.com/news/echo-and-the-bunnymen/53344

It includes a number of pleas from fans of the club, both famous and not so famous and not famous at all to the current owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett to sell the club and get the hell out of Liverpool. It would appear that the duo are somewhat unpopular in a city that has a fanatical fan base for both it's main teams. Having been to the Kop on a number of occassions with the Incredible Mr Ford when we were at university I am feeling the shock of the club's dwindling success and, in particular, their awful start to this season. It now appears that the holding company, Kop Holdings owes the Royal Bank of Scotland 280M pounds and need to pay it back by 15th October or face administration. If that happens the club are likely to face the docking of 9 points, leaving them -3 in the league.

The pair bought the club in 2007, vowing to build a new stadium in Stanley Park and remove the club from debt. So far the debt has not been removed and so the new stadium, despite being designed and planned, remains unbuilt. At the same time the team has not performed due to injuries and a lack of desire from the owners to buy new players.

Now we're hearing that if the club goes into administration it could risk the deal with the proposed buyers further risking the future of the club.

Surely this can't be allowed to happen. Britains most successful club cannot be allowed to disappear. And I'm not just saying this because I've followed them for 22 years. I'd say the same if it was any of the other big clubs in Briatin.

James at the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver - 7th October

A friend and I went to see James last week. Tracey was ill and couldn't go. The Commodore Ballroom is an old venue with a stage, a dance floor in front and raised seating areas with table to the side. It's tiny with a capacity of just 900. When we arrived the place was pretty empty with a few people up at the stage and lots of people eating their dinner. Never seen that before.

The support act, Ed Hardcourt (not spelled right) came on. I have a copy of an album that Mr Black had given me years ago and I was looking forward to it, but sadly he was very ordinary. I don't think the size of the audience helped but he could have made more of an effort. He evetually stormed off, apparently sulking, without saying goodnight.

When James eventually came on the crown had grown substantially but the place was only 2/3 full. They played a set of new songs from their recent mini-albums and 20 year old songs that they played live when I first saw them at University. I enjoyed it but I think a lot of the Canadian audience were a bit lost. The encore of 3 songs were more recent hits.

They were incredibly tight and gave a great performance despite the smaller crowd. In fact Tim suggested that they would return to Vancouver within a year if everyone promised to bring 1 or 2 friends next time.

Here's hoping.

Mentoring

I was asked to help mentor a graduate sales rep with Honeywell in the UK. She sits in the same office I used to sit in and has been given the same area that I used to look after when I sold service contract 12 years ago.

Back then I was head hunted to join the organization and was interviewed by a sales manager who, despite only being a couple of years older than I was, impressed me (and scared me) enough to agree to join Honeywell. Honeywell were, and still are, a brand that were seen as the best in the industry and I wanted to learn from the best.

Unfortunately this guy admitted that he was leaving the company within a month as he handed me the offer but I was still keen to join the top company.

When I started on January 12th 1999 I was told by my new boss to sell new contracts to exclusively new clients. I was not allowed to even approach existing clients and had to rely on the relationships that I had built with clients at my previous 2 employers but the issue was, I had been successful at selling contracts based on the lowest price. That's not the Honeywell way. Honeywell sell on the value they provide the client with rather than the cost of the service or product so I had to learn how to sell all over again. This was incredibly tough and made even tougher by the fact that I didn't feel I had anyone to bounce ideas off.

If I had had access to a mentor back then it would have been a different story. My confidence would have been higher, I would have learned far quicker and my results would have improved. Luckily for me we won a very large contract withe Siemens to provide maintenance services for the 3 national Savings Bank sites in Glasgow, Blackpool and Durham and I was asked to move from sales to operations. I was still responsible for selling, but selling projects within these contracts (and others that I was given as I proved my effectiveness) rather than new contracts. As I gained more experience on how to sell these projects I was asked to help a new service sales rep and act as a consultant/mentor. This resulted in them winning a few contracts that they were struggling to sell on their own and I got the mentoring bug. It made me feel valuable, experienced and important. In turn this increased my confidence and I became more successful in my own job.

I've done the same for a couple of others since, including one here in Canada. With this young rep in Scotland I am talking to her on a monthly basis (7am here and 3pm in UK) and taking her through a lot of the techniques that I have learned since moving to North America. I've found that the North Americans are years ahead of our European cousins so it's amazing how much I've learned in 4 years.

I'm also able to introduce her to some key people both within Honeywell and with clients. For example she was looking through the "lost contracts" list for Scotland and this included a contract that I used to manage. We lost it because the client decided to take the service we provided in-house. She had started talking to a couple of people who were pleased that she had called as they were unhappy with their current service provider and asked to start estimating a price. Sounded encouraging given the size of this contract. When she talked about this last month I became suspicious that this client would be wasting her time so I called their client's client who I knew very well from my time running their contract. Now we are engaged at a much higher level and our young rep has secured a meeting that she would never have secured on her own. In fact she wouldn't have thought to contact this guy because she didn't have the history or the relationship or even know this guy existed. He's talking about a completely different model and we have the opportunity to win this large contract back again.

I'm not going to benefit financially from this but my mentorship has been exposed to the senior management in the UK and they are happy with the outcome so far and impressed with the value that this new rep is getting.

I'm telling her to, absolutely, go and talk to existing clients and the ones that are happy with us in particular. Our clients are often our best sales reps as they connect with potential clients from the point of view of the client. I've told her to get their permission to use their names with new clients. Find out why our clients do business with us, what they like about us and what they would like to see us do differently and use this information to sell more contracts.

I've given her techniques that I've learned recently to access the CEO level and use this to gain an insight into what these people need, what their business objectives are and the challenges that make those goals difficult. It's our job to remove those challenges and if we do, our price becomes a secondary issue.

I think this is incredibly important, but not just for new reps. I now have a coach of my own; an experienced and very successful rep here in Canada. He is flying out to BC next week to attend some calls with me and provide feedback and tips on how to improve the chances of winning these deals. It's the sharing of ideas and experiences that is helping us all improve our selling methods and increasing our chances to sell more effectively.

Some experienced reps see this as exposing weaknesses to the company. In their minds they don't need some other rep telling them how to sell. They are comfortable selling the way they have been used to and, in many cases, very successful. But I say, take yourself out of your comfort zone, embrace other peoples ideas and be open to learning form others.