It’s pretty easy to be a selfish sales person.

Most of our sales processes are built on the premise that it’s “all about us”…

Sure.

That’s not the actual language in your handbook.

And you might never hear that in your weekly sales meeting.

But.

You might find yourself:

1. Sending “I just wanted to touch base” emails
2. Going to a meeting without researching your prospect’s situation
3. Detached from leading-edge industry research that could save your prospect time and money
4. Leaving voicemail with the “call me back” ending
5. Using  ”consulfusing” sales techniques that waste your prospect’s time
6. Writing off prospects because they don’t move as fast as you would like
7. Putting 17 social media links in your email signature
8. Using phrases like “here’s what I want to do”
9. Not following-up after a sales call

And.

etc…, etc…

Any one of those qualifies as “first class” selfish salesmanship.

It’ll make you think…

It’s that time of year again where we take stock of our poor performance from last year and write down blissful wishes for what we want to make happen this year.

It actually a pretty worthwless activity…

From joining a new gym to going to church more to drinking less — whatever you resolve come New Years has a 78% chance of ultimately failing.  That’s almost everybody!

I didn’t make that up.  That’s what a recent international study of almost a thousand people indicated.

Just like we have been trained to do nice things for people around Christmas even though we act like inconsiderate jerks the rest of the year, so we have also trained ourselves to pause ever so briefly at the beginning of each year to wish we could do a few things differently in the coming year.

And it’s a worthless waste of time for 8 out of 10 of us.

And while I am on the subject, why are we still talking about 3-year and 5-year plans when we can’t get this yearly thing figured out?  Seems like a bunch of silly nonsense.

Seriously, are we committed to real change? Real sacrificial “it hurts like hell” change.

We don’t even apply the same level of respect to our own goals as we do the dudes we watch on ESPN.

We respect an obsessive work ethic that makes an all star like Michael Jordan sink 100 free-throws in a row before leaving practice.  We marvel at the obscene practice put in by perfectionists like Tiger Woods who practice distance putting at 3 and 10 foot intervals for hours a day.

And yet when it comes to putting in a little more effort for ourselves, we tend to be the first to come up with excuses (good ones too).  And the older we get, the more experience we gain explaining why our failure was really a good thing.

Aren’t you tired of mediocrity?  Of being an “almost all-star”?

Are you willing to do something about it?  To change?

Are you willing to:

1. Connect your goal with a larger mision in life… (turn “making more money” into “helping a small company flourish”)
2. Construct your goal into a series of smaller monthly milestones… (turn big deadlines into a series of progressive tasks)

If so, you might be ready to see breakthrough this year.  This might be the year of YOU… ALL of the 22% who accomplished their annual goals noted that these two were the two primary drivers for their success — passion and planning.

It’s amazing what you can do when you really want something more for yourself.

You might just change the world.

This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays.  I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…”

(at least I thought so)

We really thought through the whole process and I am pumped by the stack of “stuff” sitting in our kitchen that needs to be wrapped.

It’s about the relationship, right?

There are people you care about — people around whom you really want to build a history.  It kind of parallels your deal making process.

Makes sense, right?  You want to do business with people that you can stand being around.  People you like.

That’s about building a relationship.  Not seasonal email torpedoing.  But a consistent communication thread.

My inbox got me thinking……….

How special would you feel if you were sent the following e-card from someone that you spent money with this year?

I love the “We hope this communication is welcomed…”  Makes me feel like you really remember who I am.  And are you really giving me the option to unsubscribe from next year’s seasonal greetings?

You tell me.  Maybe I am being picky.

Now how about this one…  Are you feeling the love?

I now have to click on a link to go a site to see all the Christmas warmth you can’t wait to share with me… As if that isn’t enough to do, there is the obligatory signature language informing me that I could be sued for mishandling the email you are sending me.  WOW…. way too much baggage for me to do anything with.  I just have to archive it…

These both ended up in my inbox (along with a tiresome few others…) and I just didn’t have the energy to keep clicking through to link after link so I could get in the Christmas spirit.  It kind of made it all feel like a “chore”…

Like maybe our relationship wasn’t so important after all…

Know what I mean?

It gets you thinking.  What’s the logic behind this?

Who emerged from their marketing “bat-cave” with the fantabulous idea that impersonal seasonalized hyperlink creation was something that made customers feel like “you care”?

Was there a memo in the late ’90s that I missed?

Two words: CALL ME…

I know I’m a little cranky when it comes to this stuff, but doesn’t it seem a little dis-ingenuous?  Even if you give the sender the “benefit of the doubt”, you can’t overlook the general lack of creativity.  The fact remains that in the haste to have another “client touch”, the marketer forgot to put himself in the recipient position.

Here’s reality: No one really reads this stuff.

(not even your grandma who has unlimited Facebooktime)

Maybe the first one you get (right after Thanksgiving), but right around the second week in December you are left with no other choice but massive select-and-archive.  You even feel a little bad about it, but you justify if by telling yourself that if you have time, you’ll dig them out later at home to look through.

And you never do…  It’s just not a high priority.

Without a relationship, you just avoid all the rest of  the noise coming at you.

And certainly this mirrors a hunch I have had for some time now as I talk with C-level executives and ask about their behavior to inbound messaging.  I decided to test my theory.  About a week ago, I put a poll up on LinkedIn asking the following question:

“If relationships really do matter in sales, why don’t we build better ones throughout our selling process?”

Here are the overall results:

• 40% stated that they didn’t have enough access to the right people to build a great relationship…
• 10% noted that they tried to build good relationships but didn’t know how to keep it up…
• 20% thought that it wasn’t really a good use of their time…  AND
• 30% admitted they weren’t really sure how to build great relationships…

When you study this further, you see that ALL of the CEO’s who responded to this question answered the same — that they had not developed this skill of long term relationship building.

Are you surprised?  You might have thought that senior level executives had “schmoozing” all figured out.  Maybe not.  Maybe there’s more to that cocktail parties and fast one-liners.

The numbers get more interesting when you look at the size of the companies responding.  All of the big guys (who would have the biggest sales and marketing budgets) all noted that they didn’t have access to the right people to build great relationships.

Essentially, the guys with the most advantages toward building the best relationships were the least likely to know how to get the right people.  Interesting indeed.

When you look at the age for relationship building, it becomes even more significant.  The young guys and old guys fall into the same category — limited access to the right executives.  While the mid-life high-performers know the right people, but aren’t really sure what to do to keep their attention.

Kind of what you would expect from life, right?  You work hard to get somewhere; and then once you’re there you push so far and fast ahead that you lose valuable ties to people who could be a valuable resource to you.

Young or old, big or small — we all need to work a little harder to keep our relationships strong.  They are our lifeblood, our lifeline to accomplishing our life’s mission.

So think about how you treat your relationships.

Are you asking friends to triple-click through your e-card nonsense, or are you bold enough to just say “Thank You”…  and mean it…

P.S.  Thank you to all the amazing readers of The DEW View!  Have a Happy Holidays.  I am grateful that I was able be a part of your 2009 selling year.  Take some time to get recharged and then let’s plan on changing the world together in ’10….  Thanks again!!!

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.

Things blow up…. bad.

You get beaten up in your personal life and it starts to affect your chances at closing deals.

You have opportunities that demand finesse, skill, and talent — and you feel defeated and ready to quit.

Winning is more than about a notch on the belt. It pays the bills.  Not succeeding is something you don’t want to consider….

So, what do you do?  How do you put your life back together while not missing a career beat?

1. Recognize that life dealt you a black eye.  There is no use denying the obvious.
2. Try to solve solvable life problems as soon as possible.  Let go of your ego.
3. Spend time “grinding” through the sales steps you know you need to get done.  Send emails.  Return calls.
4. Set aside a few special minutes a day to focus on your sales goals.  Focus on your dreams.
5. Write down your scattered sales strategy thoughts throughout the days.  Your mind has a lot going on so take the time to store your half-finished ideas on paper.
6. Write your daily goals on a calendar and don’t let time commitments slide.  Don’t let things that used to take 5 minutes take 30 minutes.
7. Talk to someone that you trust and get the bad stuff out of your head.  Telling yourself that you suck is not a super way to build confidence.
8. Challenge yourself in a favorite hobby or through physical exercise.  Take time for mastery.
9. Take the first step toward your sales goal that day. Then another. Then another.  Build momentum.
10. Learn from the experience — about yourself, about how your customer might be feeling.  Build empathy.

There’s probably more to this list than the points I have included.  In fact, I am sure there is more to consider.  The point is that life happens — and it hurts.  You want the world to stop so you can heal and it won’t.  It just runs you over again.  Use these basic steps to stay “in the game” while your world works itself out.

Winning is not about removing problems that you can not control but about continuing in spite of them…

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And a special event for The DEW View! community.  Join me November 19th for a Masterclass about “Edgy Conversations: An Explosion of Opportunities”

Ever wonder how some sales executives land big deals with big players and you feel stuck chatting up the small guys about opportunities that will probably never happen.  Do you want to get the attention of the right people?  Do you want to see the number of opportunities you are working on explode?  Learn how to have “Edgy Conversations”.  Learn how to have conversations that matter….

I hope we can share a few minutes together…

Sneak up behind someone and poke them with a safety pin and they jump.   Do it 100 times to a 100 different people and you will get the SAME result.

It’s human nature.  It’s a reaction that all people have.  Going a little deeper — it’s a subconscious reaction to feedback from our nervous system.  Millions of impulses every second tell you that you are in pain — to move your body away from the source  of pain.

It’s not even something you think about.

Which brings me back to the topic of my recent angst — sales strategies based on stats…

Sales research is cool (our teams do a ton of it), but building your sales strategy around market perceptions research is absolutely senseless.  I am not sure where we business people went so wrong, but the practice of “wind sniffing” is eroding the foundations of our businesses.  We happily produce neutered sales teams while happily sharing the stats around why we are making stupidly uninspired decisions.
We attempt nothing grand, challenging, or edgy.  Instead we “grow a set of stats” and use them as a billy club to keep the sales guys in line and unoriginal.

Here is how it works:

1. “Business A” wants to generate more money in their marketplace…
2. Executives research what people are buying and doing in the “Business A” marketplace…
3. Sales team tasked to deliver on getting more people in the “Business A” marketplace to buy more…

Seems harmless.  In fact, you might be thinking: “this sounds like a great idea to me; why so much frustration, Daniel?”

But here are the problems:

1. You can’t improve something by executing a “more of the same” sales strategy… (i.e. Bad people doing bad things produce bad things in bad ways.  Copying that is bad too.)
2. Multiple snapshots of buyer activity produce vastly inconsistent data… (i.e. Like 5 blind dudes with a elephant you get a difference perspective every time you roll out of bed and check your numbers.)
3. People don’t want what they say they want… (i.e. People don’t want to pay a “fair price”.  They want to pay “their fair price.)
4. Stats bear “builder bias” not facts… (i.e. You can’t escape that you will already have most of the answer before you start working on looking at your “viral stats”.)
5. Everybody else is equally as motivated to improve mediocrity (i.e. Improving your hustle over your competitor just means that you look like an idiot more times to more prospects.)

Building on mediocrity still has the failure of mediocrity at the foundation — which really negates the “building” part of the scenario…  (DEWism)

Watching what people are doing or how they are acting is a good operational practice but quite limited when it comes to sales.  It breaks down to Maslow and understanding people.

People do what people do because they are people  and that’s what people do…

Instead of researching what already exists  – what people are already doing — spend time on what you WANT people to be doing.  That should be your ONLY concern.  What people are doing is already the past.  Your vision for them promises a new and better future.

Here is a stat for you:  99.99% of people want to live and love… Lose your sales stats and sell that with passion…

[...and a Happy Birthday to my mother who taught me to live with courage, to strive for excellence, and to never back down from my obsession with changing the world...]

It you have been in sales long then you can appreciate when I make the observation that SALES is a fight.  It require discipline, dedication, and dogged training.  To be the best (or even get better) you have to “put in the time” in the sales gym.  You can’t get better by being a “January Gym Going”…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALfwu5doGU]

It doesn’t work.  You will never be the dude giving the knockout punch.  You’ll find yourself gasping for breath, knocked around, and feeling like you just got sucker punched.  And the reality is just that.  You got taken (and lost the deal)…

Like a good fight, the winner knows what he is going to do before the chime of the bell.  He has a plan and he executes with a zeal of a man who is about to get his head split open if he doesn’t win.  It’s that intense.

So what do you do?

You “put in the time”!  (like a lot of life, there is no shortcut….)

You study your craft, study the big players, study some great sources (like Seth and Sandler and Shamus and SalesClub)…  and you decide that whatever happens (no matter how badly you get hurt) you will show up for training the next day…  Because that’s what winners do.

And this is your fight.  And you have come to play……

The 4th of July stands as a tribute to taking action against oppression, bad philosophy, and a depressing future.  America’s foundation in being independent could serve as a lesson to many sales people who forget that most of what they will read in sales books WILL NOT work for them…

I am celebrating the great feedback that many of you sent to me about our webinar on how to achieve outrageous revenue growth this year.  Thanks for attending.  Only (2) people gave us less than 5 stars which means that almost everyone got something out of it — which is what I wanted to accomplish.

I have been asked if I would make the slides available and here they are below.

[slideshare id=1675790&doc=4-5supertestedsecretstotweeteryourwaytofacebookglory-090702153552-phpapp01]

If viewing the slides is the first time you are looking at the content, then it may not make all that much sense to you.  You can view the finished product over here.

Celebrate your independence from everything that is holding you back from growing sales right now.

If the average conversation lasts 2.3 minutes and the average sales pitch is 23 minutes…. something tells me our prospects stopped listening more than 20 minutes ago.

Might be time to change something?

Because I only fear what I have not already conquered, I must conquer all to fear nothing.*

We don’t ask “how much longer” on a trip we have already taken…  We don’t agonize over puzzles we have already solved…  We don’t worry about an enemy we have already defeated…

We fear what we have not already conquered.  We fear our reaction to failure, to pain, to the unknown.

To be fearless, you must have the courage to fail often, to lose viciously, and to battle fiercely….

Selling is no different.

*yeah that is a DEWism compliments of “yours truly”…

Confucius said: “Worry not that no one knows of you; seek to be worth knowing…“

Do you have your business card within reach?  Take a look at it for a minute.

What’s your title?  (Let’s start with that)  What are you calling yourself?

Let me guess….

You have the words “executive” or “associate” or “VP“* or “representative“  or “development” (maybe “owner” or “founder” or “principal” too) somewhere in a 2-4 word label of what you do — what value you provide to a buyer.

*(I chuckle at the “VP” moniker as it seems to be a favorite among sales dudes.  Somehow getting up in the morning and putting on a tie isn’t enough for most of us in the profession of sales.  We need our VP badge of honor to go make some sales…)

If you have anyone of those words in your title then you are NOT a square peg in the sales hole.

You are friction-free!

Congratulations, you have played the game safe.  You have not offered to provide anything different or extraordinary to prospective customers.  You have not given your competition any concern about posing a threat to their market penetration.  You have not  had to explain to your boss, why you were “doing things differently”.  You have followed the rules and you should be proud of yourself (or not….).

Can I make a bold statement?

You are probably the same person who is  wondering right now how to make enough sales to meet your quota this month.  You are also the person who is looking for a new job because “no one is buying” what you are selling.  You can’t figure out why sales aren’t happening as fast as you would like.  In fact recently, sales haven’t been coming to you at all.

Can I make another bold statement?

Forcing yourself to stick out isn’t for most sales executives.

• It requires the fortitude to  pop back up when the world pushes you down…
• It requires the preparation to present value at every interaction…
• It requires the creativity to think differently about your job…
• It requires the courage to stand on your own and lead new directions…
• It requires the passion to fight for what you hope you is right…
• It requires being the square peg that can not fit in the typical selling “round” hole…

Be the square sales peg!

Start with your title.  It’s the first thing people want to know about you.

By the way, sticking out isn’t the glory you way be thinking.  There are actually only a FEW market gurus.  Odds are you probably won’t be one either — to start.  You can always fight for your place in history, but you can’t be shoved down the hole with everyone else and expect outrageously successful revenue explosion.

You must stand up.

You must stand out!