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A few weeks I ago I found myself at the Ferretería (Hardware shop) wanting to buy a saddle clamp to temporarily fix the shower hose in place so we could have a hands free shower.

The problem was when I arrived at the Ferretería I realized that I didn't know how to ask for a saddle clamp. Hmm, sometimes it can be so frustrating knowing what you want in your own language but not in Spanish.

In any given situation if I don't know the name of an item I do a lap of the shop first and hope like hell it's down one of the aisles. Having said that, every Ferretería that I've been to has stocked different items. Rule of thumb, if you can't find what you're looking for it's either out the back or they don't stock the item. Read More

Great news for anyone who has bought property in Ronda or who plans to buy property in Spain, the new Eroski shopping center which has been talked about for the last few years looks like it may finally happen.

This is a big deal in Ronda because high unemployment will be somewhat alleviated as construction gets underway, scheduled for the beginning of ground clearing in March, but the entire project could take as much as three years to build.

The ground to be used comprises the old football ground in Ronda, which also includes the area below it that used to be the old fair ground, and some vacant land to the side that fronts onto one of the two Mercadona supermarkets. Across the ring road is one of the old Supersol hypermarkets and the new fair ground. Read More

My consultancy business has been picking up steam recently, and the latest project I'm interested in tackling is a contract to modernize the sales training of a hotel call center on the coast.

I've been involved in sales and sales management for years, and there is one mistake management make all the time that they really can't afford to make if they aim to train up a great team of salespeople.

The mistake is to think that salespeople should be good enough to sell in all situations, and the reason this is such a fallacy is that we are all human, when we have a bad day it is hard to be motivated if you don't feel like management has your best interests at heart.

The client call center employs 25 salespeople who take calls for outsourced reservations and enquiries and since most of them have never visited the hotels they need a great hoteling software package that shows them floor layout and can link to basic info about the location.

Without this information the staff are shooting in the dark and unlikely to make very many sales, which cuts into their commission, and ultimately leads to high churn as staff leave for other call centers that will give them the tools they need.

Running a sales team that performs isn't the hardest thing in the world to do if the right tools are used by management and the team. The right tool makes it difficult for an under-performing sales person to make excuses about the tools at their disposal.

Similarly, the tool lets management see at a glance which sales person is most in need of support and this can be offered when problems first start to present themselves, instead of much later when it can be difficult to re-motivate an team member who has already started the spiral of despair.