It has been another interesting week, as I went through a face 2 face session in Brussels Belgium, part of my sales course at IBM. The IBM sales school is considered top in its class, and covers many aspects of a seller’s new challenges.
The 3 day session was a real eye opener for me, as I learned a lot! There are many models and tools IBM sellers are using, and it was interesting not only learning about them but also putting them to the test, in real life situations, played out by participants of the course.
2 models left strong impression and would definitely be used in the future: Objection Handling and Call Model, which gives you a set of rules on how to make a successful sales call, from end-to-end. Very interesting.
I’ve been traveling a bit, not plenty, but I think Brussels breaks the record in terms of Candy and Chocolate shops. In some cases, such as Grand Place, there are around 10 shops!! And every shop offers you some teasers, a small taste of the goods – and it was hard resisting to it… Obviously I bought some, for family, friends and colleagues back home. I have half a day tomorrow (Thu) before I head back to Israel (which celebrates Rosh Hashana these days – thanks Bob for your greetings), and I’m doing some googling to decide where to go.
So far I have my eyes on The Belgian Center for Comic Strip Art, home of Tintin and Snowy, one of the famous comic characters ever created; Manneken Pis – Belgium’s national symbol, a small boy pissing. Yes, pissing; and last but not least – Royal Museum of Art and History. I hope I’ll had the time to cover all 3 – stay tuned and find out.
In other news, IBM announced it’s joining the OpenOffice.org Community, along with Sun, in a move that gives a hugh support to the Microsoft Office open source option. IBM’s contribution will be on several levels, including initial code contribution that has been developed for the new Lotus Notes 8, as well as making ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. I read it first at Ed Brill, although I admit still haven’t read the entire announcement, as well as other articles and posts available on the web.
I encourage you to read at least one of the above articles/posts – it will give you an idea of IBM’s commitment to support open source platforms, such as Eclipse, to the benefit of the end user.
And I’ll finish with a traditional blessing for the Days of Awe – Shana Tova and Gmar Hatima Tova.
