Malcolm Duffield

Malcolm Duffield provides advanced high-level sales coaching, ‘basic sales training’ and sales training for pre-sales and post-sales engineering staff. In ways markedly different to the typical classroom lecture approach. Like the game of ‘Go’ – selling is strategically complex, nuanced and more dependent on intuition than process. Sales – process alone is no guarantee of success because customers are humans, are fiendishly complex, intuitive and need to be met on their terms. Humans need to interact rather than merely transact. They have many needs, wants and aspirations – not all clearly stated. Having a proposal that is a good fit to the stated need is a start. Having a price that’s in the ball park will also help – but what will invariably make the difference between success and failure will be our ability to understand, connect with and provide value to the customer as a person. Focused primarily on IT sales, where solution and value, but above all human connection through respect, integrity and empathy, have to be brought together to win high-value deals - it would appear that other 'capital acquisitions' benefit from a similar approach. I have 30 years experience in such sales, and know what works and what doesn't work.

Why can’t treasury prove to the electorate the value of an educated society?

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Is it right, in a democracy, that the elected government should consider the electorate to be incapable of understanding the worth of people? That is, in Australia, people of any and all ethnicity’s – including indigenous. Why then does the information associated with the real cost of raising kids to adulthood and the value to society of those …

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I thought this in 2017 – it’s still valid!

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I once read an interesting article in the Fairfax press (http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/tech-giants-living-in-fear-of-doing-a-microsoft-20171015-gz1gih.html) which touched on an issue very close to my heart. It outlined how all the once brave, bold and innovative Tech-giants (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc) – who each got monstrously large with one unique ‘big idea’ – had now fallen into the ‘me too’ …

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