You can‘t have a seat at your desk with Outlook open and the phone by your side and expect calls and emails to hit you like a hail storm. Establishing relationships with prospects takes energy and time. You have to talk to strangers, ask questions, answer their questions, and tell them about yourself, what you…
True story. A vendor, trying to get a friend of mine to upgrade to a more expensive package, says to her, “Maybe this time next year, you will have actually FOUND a job, and will be able to spend more money on us.” Where to begin? The vendor clearly knew enough about my friend to…
There is a simple rule of getting things done and that is to do what you like the least first. Following that logic, I make all of my prospecting calls first thing in the morning. If I try and do them after lunch or at the end of the day, I‘m tempted to give a…
Like all prospecting, tele-prospecting stinks like an infant’s diaper. It is the worst part of any sales job. It’s tedious and its rewards are not immediately apparent. It doesn’t provide instant gratification and usually delivers frustration after frustration. A small percentage of calls yield results. And yet those results matter and make the tediousness worth…
If you don’t have a passion for the actions needed to achieve success, then you really don’t desire success. At most, you’re just sitting around or wandering around the office, optimistic that success and you will bump into each other accidentally. That doesn’t happen, not even in the movies. You want success, then desire what…
If you have an idea about what you’d like to do, then that’s great: you have an idea. You don’t yet have a plan, however. You don’t have a plan until you write it down and work it out. When it’s in front of you, and you can analyze it, critique it, and revise it,…
As a leader, it is your job to put the desire and confidence back into each team member. This starts with putting the right people in the right positions, coaching them to excel at their strengths, and holding every member accountable to exceeding their expectations and contributing to the overall success of the team’s culture.
You can focus on only one thing at a time. That’s what it means to focus: to direct your attention to a singular point. With this in mind, do you think it better to focus on improving your strength or overcoming your weaknesses? I say improving your strengths. First, people are typically willing to work…
This story appears in my book, The Sales Leader’s Playbook: I remember one young lady in a sales position who really did not like sales, which is probably why she had not obtained quota the previous six months. She did not enjoy prospecting and found that, regardless of the reports the previous manager had her complete,…
When we enjoy what we do and we do it well, we have more passion for it. We cease to be motivated solely by the upcoming paycheck, and begin to work for the enjoyment of the tasks, the struggles, and the fruits of our labor. I call this “plorking,” playing for work and getting paid…