Emi Gal » Random

How to be a sales pro in three simple steps

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:24:47 +0000

I’ve been selling stuff for as long as I can remember. Started off with business cards when I was 10, went on to sell websites when I was 15, services when I was 18 and now so on.

A couple of years ago I got a contract with a very, very big and demanding customer for one very simple reason: I showed up more times than my competitors did. You’ve heard it before, but I can’t stress enough how true this rule is: 80% of a sales pitch is showing up.

Ever went into a store, asked for a blue shirt and heard the sales person go: “I’m sorry, we’re out of blue shirts, but would you like a pink t-shirt?”. You have, haven’t you? Everybody has, and we all hate it. So, next time you sell something to someone, put yourself in his or her shoes. If he’s looking for a blue shirt, would he or she buy a pink t-shirt or not?

Last but definitely not least: Repeat. Repeat it until you can sell anything to anyone. Sell yourself. Sell your ideas. Your arguments. Your beliefs. Just sell. And keep in mind that becoming a great sales person, just as anything else, takes at least 10,000 hours.

There – you read it all, so it means I just sold you my post .

How I won my time back

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:56:46 +0000

Until very recently I had, like most of you, about 150 feeds in Google Reader. I zapped through them throughout the day, which gave me a (fake) sense of being up-to-date with everything.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to delete 90% of my feeds, and only keep those of friends & people I’m really interested in. I ended up with exactly 20 feeds.

Without further blabbering, RescueTime says I’ve “won” back about 6 hours / week. Six hours. I finally have time to finish Crime and Punishment, and that makes me a very happy chap.

Try it out, it works. And no, you won’t miss anything. If something’s really important, it will get to you one way or another.

Why there’s no Flash on the iPad. And why there won’t be any. Ever.

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:02:34 +0000

Here’s how the story goes: many, many years ago there was this really cool video editing tool called Adobe After Effects. At the same time there was this really, really cool operating system called Mac OS X. All good.

The only problem: After Effects didn’t work on OS X, so Mr. Stevie Jobs went to Mr. Adobe CEO and said: Dude, c’mon, make it work. And Mr. Adobe CEO said: neah, you only sell a few thousand computers per year, it’s not worth it. So Stevie went on and built Final Cut and promised Adobe’s CEO that he’ll make it back.

Therefore, no flash on the iPhone, no flash on the iPad, no flash-on-any-freaking-beautiful-device-ever-built-by-Apple. Ever.

And that’s how the story goes .

I blog, therefore I am

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:11:11 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve been thinking to start a blog in English. Those of you who speak Romanian already know how much I enjoy writing. My Romanian blog is 3 years old now. Time flies.

I’m going to go ahead and put my brain to work now, but until I actually write something interesting, feel free to check out the english posts on my Romanian blog.

Cheers!

Later edit: I decided to import the english posts from my Romanian blog.