Sales and Selling.
I realised today that I'd given little thought recently to one of my key areas of interest ... sales and selling.

Many years ago I was deeply involved in sales training for one of the major office equipment corporates. Whilst I owed my own skills to a very training oriented business systems company in Birmingham (they gave all sales people 12 weeks of residential training!), I was dissatisfied with most current approaches to training and understanding of the process of a sale.
In the early '60s most sales training in the UK was based on a series of training films by an American couple called Richard C. Borden and Alvin C. Busse. Their approach was probably based on 1930s thinking and was totally unsuited to the needs of sales people at that time in England (the early 60s).
Bordern and Busse built their sale around a series of steps that you had to be adept at performing if you were to become a 'supersalesman' (no political correctness in those days) ... Attention, Interest, Demonstration and Analysis ... AIDA. Every other training program I could find in those days seemed to be similar ... teaching you the things you had to do to 'get the prospect to buy'!  I was pretty dismayed ...  the focus of all of them and the focus of most of our sales recruits was on what you had to do to the prospect, rather than ... which had been my own approach as a salesman ... what was happening in the prospect's mind . 
It seemed clear to me that if I wanted to turn out well trained professional sales people I had to engender a major shift in their thinking: "Stop thinking about what you are doing to the prospect — focus your thinking on what is happening in the prospect's mind. Concentrate on the stages through which you can guide his thinking on his path towards experiencing, for himself, the great benefits your product has to offer him".
More about this later but eventually, with a group of like minded people, a new way of thinking about the sale and the 'prospect's progress' took our national team to the top of the company's sales productivity world wide, it enabled us to become super accurate in sales forecasting and eventually to develop new concepts in bottom-up planning and matrix management that were light years ahead!

Well today I took my wake-up coffee out onto my back verandah and there was the skeleton of a two person kayak sitting on my back deck!
It had been delivered by a guy I met at the local rubbish dump ... we had got into conversation about fitness and I told him that the one thing I need for next summer is a kayak. I cycle heaps ... good for the lower body ... add kyaking and I'll be getting upper body fitness too. In fact, I may start a new event for oldies — Pedals and Paddles.So he had this uncovered frame for a wood and canvas kayak.and donated it to my fitness cause.

As I said ... it's a two person craft. 15 feet long and quite broad in the beam. So it should be easy to paddle and quite stable for fishing from.

Of course, now I will have to get going and cover it. Some issues here because in 'my day' we always used duck canvass with a few coats of enamel over a filler coat. I understand that today other coverings , like dynel, are used and often coated with epoxy or such like. Actually I'm still tempted to stay with canvass and paint but I'm ready to be convinced if another method will keep the weight down.

I haven't mentioned it before but one of my current projects is to build a three wheeled pedal cycle for my old age. It will be a recliner (the pedaller lying rather than sitting) and will have two wheels at the front and one driving wheel at the back. Obviously this project will involve a bit of welding, a skill I don't have. So my first phase will be to learn to weld. Thin walled tube ... which is one of the hardest welding tasks. Going slow on this one, but I'll win in time!


Here's another adaptation for my flute ...

It seems that at the moment I'm calling for help from other people, rather than contributing much wisdom to bloggery.
I guess that's probably a good switch for me to be making. It was once pointed out to me that I was too self sufficient and needed to call for help a bit more!
Can anyone help me pin down a homoeopathic remedy for colic in a new born baby?
One of my daughters has a new baby daughter who is suffering badly from colic after feeding. I prided myself on my knowledge of homoeopathics (yes that is the right spelling!) but none of my reference sources are very helpful on this topic. I have sent her a recipe — with variations — for 'gripe water' but nothing homoeopathic.

I have just finished adapting the Welsh song Myfanwy for my NAF . . . simple but nice. What do you think?

I have been trying to find the name of a piece of music that I think would be cool to play on my flute. I usually like to listen to a piece in audio before adapting it.

Can anyone help by naming this very well known music?

I have decided to change the direction of my blog significantly.

Since I last posted here I have become involved in learning to play a North American Indian Flute which was given to me by a very dear friend who lives in Australia.

The NAF (as it's called), for those who haven't come across it before, is a flute adopted by North American Indians as a love flute. As far as I can discover, it was first introduced to the Indians by European fur trappers (probably French) in the 1500s and has since become a part of most tribes' tradition. 
It is a simple straight wooden flute with 5 or 6 holes and has a range of about 17 half-tones.
Whilst traditional flutes are not tuned to any specific key and are played to pentatonic scales, many of us like to play conventional European music as well as simulating Indian music.

For my own purposes, and those of my friend in Australia, I have been rearranging, transposing, and adding fingering for European Folk Songs, popular tunes (not contemporary) and classical pieces to fit this flute's range and functionality.
It was suggested to me that there may be other people interested in my adaptations. I will therefore, from time to time, feature them on this blog.
I don't know if I am breaching copyright law here, even though my adaptations are not published for profit, but if anyone has an issue with any piece I will withdraw the work in question.

There are a few other things to bear in mind:
• NA Flutes are hand made, often by amateurs, so although the fingering I show works on my flute, you may need to modify it for your instrument.
• I am just an amateur dabbler, so you experts please forgive any lack of accuracy in layout, timing or use of symbols
• I welcome any suggestions, either to correct stuff I post, or in terms of music I could adapt.
• My flute is tuned to E and has five holes so the key signature and fingering are specific to those factors.  The Fingering is of course universal applicable to most 5 hole NAFs.

NAF MUSIC #1      Brahms' Lullaby