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Buying

They’ll Come Back. Oh No They Won’t!

by Chris Arlen

As sellers, we’d like to think that customers eventually see the error of their ways. Customers, being the customer, have the right to make bad buys. And they do, whether it’s recessionary [...]

click to continue → February 27, 2012

We Are All Temps

by Chris Arlen

Salespeople are known to change jobs frequently. And there are millions of us with tentative tenure. In 2009 there were 16 million salespeople in the U.S. If we miss our numbers, have [...]

click to continue → March 9, 2011

Tyrannosaurus Procurement

by Chris Arlen

In the late Recessionary period Procurement is king when it comes to supplier selection for large contracts. In this evolutionary time, business owners (those who manage the selected supplier) have little to [...]

click to continue → January 17, 2011

Sales Training 101: POV

by Chris Arlen

If there’s one must-have, die-without sales training, it’s understanding Points of View (POV)…that are not one’s own. POV is the genesis of customers buying, contracting, managing, and changing suppliers. Of contractors selling, [...]

click to continue → July 24, 2010

Who Cares What Sellers Want?

by Chris Arlen

Obviously we do if we’re selling or managing sales. But buyers (aka prospects or customers) have no reason to care. They receive no benefit by helping sales people. As dumb and basic [...]

click to continue → June 17, 2010

Government Leveling Contractors Playing Field

by Chris Arlen

An article in today’s New York Times describes a possible change in the way federal contracts are awarded, and it specifically calls out facility service contracts. Plan to Seek Use of U.S. [...]

click to continue → February 26, 2010

Estimates vs. Budgets

by Chris Arlen

Here’s a customer-contractor situation that, although it doesn’t happen too frequently, is extremely dicey when it does. Your customer wants a non-contract service from you, but the project isn’t in their budget. [...]

click to continue → February 1, 2010

The New Numbers Game

by Chris Arlen

The old game for selling throws lots against the wall and something sticks – numbers comparing thrown to stuck. And it’s still true, something sticks, eventually. Even one becomes the justification to [...]

click to continue → January 15, 2010

Customers Must Buy

by Chris Arlen

Customers have no choice, they must buy. It just might not be you. Obvious? Overly simplistic? Sure it is, but… I was talking with someone who’s about to begin an outside sales [...]

click to continue → November 12, 2009

Bad Acting

by Chris Arlen

A few years ago Bill S. wrote: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” We perform, and are judged by our audiences. In business, as in [...]

click to continue → October 2, 2009

3 Stages of the Buying Cycle

by Chris Arlen

All marketing and selling efforts (the sales cycle) try to move customers from indifference and inaction to purchase. However,  we tend to lose sight of where customers are in their purchase process [...]

click to continue → August 22, 2009

Buying and Selling Yorwin

by Chris Arlen

The following story is fictitious, but you’d have guessed that anyway. The marketing and selling lessons in it are true AND absolutely essential to marketing and selling anything, but even more true [...]

click to continue → July 9, 2009

Process at the Expense of Purpose

by Chris Arlen

When the process becomes more important than purpose strange things can happen, some not so good. Even responsible managers diligently working through a process, but without defining their purpose, can cause not [...]

click to continue → April 16, 2009

Janitorial Fact & Fiction

by Chris Arlen

March 16, 2009 Unhappy Janitors at Microsoft protest subcontractor’s cuts This article points to the janitorial subcontractor’s staffing cuts and unhappy janitors because of increased workloads. It made me wonder about our [...]

click to continue → March 19, 2009

A Janitorial Fable

by Chris Arlen

Long away and far ago the cleaning contract for Ubetcha Corporation was coming to the end of its term. The contract was for millions of square feet and millions of dollars. It [...]

click to continue → March 12, 2009

Responses to Customer-Contractor Relationship in 2009 Survey

by Chris Arlen

On January 28th we sent out a survey to get a feel for how the economy of 2009 might impact the customer-contractor relationship. This qualitative temperature check provided some interesting responses. Thank [...]

click to continue → February 16, 2009

Fear is…

by Chris Arlen

Fear is neither bad, nor good, it just is. Today it’s everywhere. Fear is in increasing job losses, vanishing pensions, frozen credit markets, and the worst recession since The Great Depression. Fear [...]

click to continue → January 15, 2009

What’s the Right Price for Service?

by Chris Arlen

If you’re buying, or managing, a contract service, this is the big question. Yet it feels more like a riddle than a question. And like a riddle, the answer is simple and [...]

click to continue → November 20, 2008

Greenwashing is…

by Chris Arlen

…the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service… Bandwagons are for jumping on. And Green is playing loudly everywhere, [...]

click to continue → July 12, 2008

Selling to Procurement

by Chris Arlen

An interesting insight came out of our interviews with Procurement professionals (Procurement Talks: An Interview with Microsoft and Expedia’s interview to be published next week). There’s not one style of procurement, but [...]

click to continue → June 27, 2008

Where You Stand

by Chris Arlen

Buyers want to succeed – sellers want the same. What’s in the way? Understanding each other. Sharing perspectives is a first step along the way to success. To that end I recently [...]

click to continue → June 17, 2008

Can’t Save Your Way to Success

by Chris Arlen

The expression, “can’t save your way to success”, can help service contractors better understand how they fit into their customers’ world. I first heard this saying yesterday from a senior manager of [...]

click to continue → June 13, 2008

Budget Remorse & Sandbagging

by Chris Arlen

You manage a budget. You rarely overspend, showing slight, but noticeable savings year after year. You’re a professional manager, say, a Business Owner of an outsourced service. What if you could end [...]

click to continue → June 3, 2008

If you could ask Microsoft, Yahoo and Expedia…

by Chris Arlen

Wouldn’t it be great to ask world-class companies about outsourcing, contracting and buying? Lucky you. Today’s blog gives you the opportunity to do that. You can ask Microsoft, Yahoo and Expedia about [...]

click to continue → May 21, 2008

2 Buying Trends from Anecdotal Evidence

by Chris Arlen

In the last month I’ve heard 2 buying trends from a half dozen service contractors around the country. These trends aren’t from a statistical survey, but from anecdotal evidence (which means people [...]

click to continue → April 22, 2008

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