Blog

The FourThirds Blog offers expert advice, tips & sales training enablement content for today's leading sales & learning professionals. We share tales from the road as well as best practices and How-to idea.
Only the Qualified Survive

Only the Qualified Survive

Any sales manager worth their salt will only forecast a sale once they are satisfied it’s fully qualified. But what does that mean? Just what is ‘qualified’? At its most basic level we’re taught a few simple acronyms. The first one I was taught was MANT. MANT -...

read more
Aristotle in Sales

Aristotle in Sales

That Aristotle was one smart Greek. He wasn’t even thinking about sales people at the time, but he still laid some of the key foundations for successful selling. When we think about Greeks and geometry we might think first about that other guy, Pythagoras. But it’s...

read more
Are Rock Stars the Answer?

Are Rock Stars the Answer?

As brain surgeons go, I guess I would be far to the left of the 1st quartile of a normal distribution. Translation: You probably shouldn’t ask me to perform surgery. As a professional boxer, not much better. I’d likely need a brain surgeon. As a pilot, I’d hopefully...

read more
The Sales-Pilot

The Sales-Pilot

Imagine sitting on a plane and the pilot makes the following announcement “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to welcome you on-board our flight today. I just want to let you know that we’re going to have a great taxi and take off. I’ve really mastered those skills....

read more
Hurry up and do nothing

Hurry up and do nothing

Imagine you are a commercial pilot, you’ve just taken off, you’ve climbed to a little over 2,000 feet and you lose both your engines. You have been hit by a flock of geese. You can’t make it back to the airport and you are surrounded by the concrete jungle of a large...

read more
Haggling

Haggling

Anyone who has watched the Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian, may recall the market scene where Brian attempts to hide, in plain view, from the chasing Romans by appearing to be making a purchase of a false beard from a street vendor. The vendor, who expects to...

read more