Dan Waldschmidt: Strategist, Speaker, Author » selling

Dizzy Dance Parties and Misguided Sales Celebrations.

Dan Waldschmidt — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:05:44 +0000

What’s the deal with all the sales celebrations?

On one hand it makes sense.

You just made a bunch of money. Heck, you just slapped the competition silly.

But isn’t that your job?

We don’t go skipping madly down the hall when the reception at the front desk answers the phone with a smiling “Good Morning”…. We barely even notice when the accounting people process payroll and make sure to refund our expenses.

Right? You consider those things “expected behavior”.

Someone get’s paid to deliver results, so why make a big deal about when they do what they are expected to do?

And yet, in the sales world, it’s unthinkable to not have the huge sales celebrations that we love to put on.

We gong bells, blow horns, and send around firm-wide emails festively noting the successes of our “crack squad” super-achievers.

And it’s dizzyingly bizarre.

It’s time to make changes.

Your sales career isn’t a movie.

All that silly post-close back-slapping is just noise. And it’s not even reality.

Be sad, be concerned when you’ve closed the biggest deal you’ll ever close. It’s all “down hill” from there.

Here’s something to think about:

The clearest indication of mediocrity is the need to over-celebrate. It’s a big lie that we tell ourselves in order to take the pressure off our inferior performance.

Sure you need to cheer when all your hard work and obsessive customer service focus turns into a win for the team. And, yes, people should be rewarded when they decidedly exceed outrageous expectations.

But a little less celebration might just be the key to achieving bigger and bolder things.

We confuse celebration with progress.

And many times it is. But the celebration is not the success. It’s the “after party”.

When you find yourself using celebration as a way to stimulate momentum (or progress), you know you are already knee-deep in the muck of mediocrity.

Expect high performance as the norm.

Then when you find yourself celebrating, you’ll know it is worth the trouble.

The Love Economy: How Outrageous Acts of Empathy Drive Sales Growth.

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:07:39 +0000

The business landscape has changed so dramatically over the last decade that sellers hardly know how to act.

There has been an explosion of new technology and tactics — ways to research buyers and buying activity that has never been available before.

And instead of creating better relationships, we’ve evolved into a soul-less generation of product-pitching, smooth-talking exhibitionists.

We’ve forgotten the radical power of “love”…

Even now reading that, you might find yourself with mental whiplash — wondering how the heck a discusion on kick-ass, goal-crushing strategy has anything at all to do with with the idea of kindness.

Maybe that’s the problem.

We’ve made it inconceivable that anything less than red-meat-eating, take-no-prisoners sales behavior is a sign of weakness.

That we’re leaving money on the table. That we’re not “closing”as fast as we could.

And it’s sad, neurotic behavior that limits our ability to achieve greatness.

The very greatness that we think we are pursuing.

The difference is love.

We call it a lot of things — kindness, empathy, compassion — but it’s really all the same thing.

It’s about selflessness.

About love.

And it’s the single biggest way for you to catapult your business.

Here are some thoughts for you:

1. When you love more, you give more.

In spite of your amazing products, the support ninjas answering your emails, and the self-proclaimed list of ways that you are dominating your industry, one thing is clear — buyers don’t care a lick. They don’t. They smile and nod but they don’t really care.

What breaks through is other people caring about them. More specifically, you the seller genuinely giving kindnesses to the buyer. If you want outrageous success then you need to love more, to give more.

Buyers care about what you can give them. And when you love others, you give more than you ever thought possible.

2. You can’t think of yourself and others at the same time.

The selling process is pretty selfish at times. We expect that buyers selfishly want the best deal possible. But it’s gotten nutty. Sellers rush madly at prospects like crazed 12 year old tweens fighting in line over the next Justin Bieber CD signing. It’s frenetic “look at me” behavior.

The current selling environment lacks the tolerance for product pitches.

It’s all about people pitches.

It’s actually always been about people, but limited access to data has historically allowed sellers to create thriving businesses around product superiority. Those days are past. You now need to obsess about the buyer.

And when you love, you can’t help but keep the buyer squarely in your sights. It’s inevitable that your kindness builds outrageous success.

3. The more you give now, the more you get later.

The biggest results take time to appear — which flies in the face of sales as a key performance indicator.

Sales is, in fact, a trailing indicator of the love you have for your buyer.

And yet we don’t do anything about that.

We measure calls and email volume. We track pipelines and demand quarterly quotas. And while those aren’t bad things, they no longer result in outrageous acts of business growth. They quite often yield mediocrity — uncreative follow-the-pack tribalism. It’s all soul-less affectation.

And here’s what we forget.

To live later, we have to love now.

It’s denied gratification. And we suck at that. It’s “me” and “now” and “how dare you”. And it’s stealing our dreams and destiny.

It’s The Love Economy.

A new era of being the kindness we wish others felt toward us. Of acting like service is more than intellectual prostitution. Of tears and hope and empathy.

Staying relevant in the new economy isn’t about what you want (or the products you sell). It’s about the outrageous acts of kindness you can deliver.

It’s really all about “love”…

Be The Selling Door Mat And Win Doing It.

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:05:53 +0000

You’ve probably heard the wise old adage: “You need to stop letting buyer’s waste your time…”

Sounds like the reasonably smart approach to efficient selling.

Right?

You’ve got a plan, a purpose, and more importantly a quota.

And the smart move is that you shouldn’t spend one second with idiot buyers who dare mess with your selling process.

After all, you aren’t paid to give free advice, turn in big entertainment expenses, and spend hours educating uninterested prospects who need to change but don’t have the guts to take the first step.

It’s all wonderfully logical.

It makes a fabulous pipeline. It looks good on a spreadsheet.

But it’s also quite possibly the single biggest thing crippling your selling productivity.

If you can’t invest into others, don’t expect them to give a damn about your crazy sales pitch.

It’s really that simple.

You have to give.

First and furiously.

Outrageously.

Without regret.

It’s all about how much you can give.

Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me set the record straight.

You do need to qualify effectively and measure your return-on-investment for selling.

That’s just smart business.

But there is also something intangibly amazing and rewarding about investing time and effort in a relationship. A relationship that doesn’t even exist yet.

And here’s how you do it:

You give value!

You give:

Advice
Compassion
A kind word
Consideration
Time & attention
The benefit of the doubt
Ideas
Understanding
Honor

You give.

And you do NOT give it after you think that you are getting the sale. It’s too late then. It’s just a transaction then.

It’s you trading concern, effort, and value for money.

And that’s just uncool.

It’s sales prostitution.

To be an amazing seller, you have to do things differently.

You give ahead of getting.

And even if all you care about is the “brass tacks”, here’s something you should know:

Buyers are changing how they do business. They already know (a lot) of what they want. And the only way to change the selling cycle is to provide value.

Up front.

And in a big way.

It might be hard to justify the return-on-investment for an act of kindness, but it’s the most powerful reward (financially and physically) that you will ever realize.

Which brings us back to where we started.

Maybe you need to start letting people walk all over you…

Maybe if you adjusted your sales attitude to see helping others as a positive thing, you wouldn’t be so concerned about how you look to those around you.

And maybe that’s a huge step forward in your outrageous sales performance.

43 Truths About the Death of Selling.

Dan Waldschmidt — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:06:08 +0000

Sales is dying.

The job of professional selling is going away.

It’s dead. It’s over. Seller’s need to find something else to do.It’s been a great journey.

Like the candle-maker, the gas station attendant, and the soda fountain mixer — they all had their Golden Days. But eventually, time made the job irrelevant.

In every case, invention, social awareness, and cultural expectations pushed us collectively in a different direction.

That time is fast approaching for sellers.

The craft is dead.

Don’t believe me?

Here are 43 randomly eclectic truths about selling in today’s marketplace.

We (all) hate con men
Advertising is sexier than pitching
Empathy matters
Buyers don’t like being in the sales funnel
Friends are more expert than sellers
Social buying peer pressure exists
Buyers don’t want features
Seller’s sell features
The hard sale is abusive
Selfishness is self-limiting
Information is free
The trend to automation is making the people role irrelevant
Buyers want to chose on their terms
Sellers want less choice
Internet commodity pricing is pretty persuasive
Kindness is a lost art.
The buyer’s point-of-view matters
Sellers want a 7-step process over really caring
Email communication is overused (and abused)
There isn’t enough differentiation
Our email messages are required to have an “opt out”
Sales people are tired of old calling
“Better” isn’t really clear
Cultural shifts toward openness democratize rapport-building as a craft
Buyers expect better service
Companies try to explain away poor service
Congress has to regulate telemarketers
Sellers aren’t grateful
Buyers don’t want to meet with sellers
Desperate financial times force buyer curiosity
Companies expect bad people to be good sales reps
Sellers copy rather than improve what they admire
Google is faster (and less threatening) than the Yellow Pages
Access to opinions is ubiquitous
Facebook and Twitter are more coercive
Sales competition is based on price rather than leadership
Sellers aren’t having the right conversations
Buyers want clarification not information
We’re (all) more distracted than we used to be
Digital persuasion trumps direct pitching
Seller’s misuse of communication builds distrust
Buyers want less pressure when they’re “thinking about it”
Most buyers don’t like most sellers.

Do you disagree?

But, there’s another perspective.

Selling, like any other commodity task of the past, will still be a valuable skill for craftsman.

Why?

They aren’t superficial.

They aren’t swept up in the social demands and pressures that strangle progress and generate distracting hysteria.

They are masters of a craft.

And that mastery is always in demand.

So you have a decision.

Are you going to be a craftsman?

Or are you going to start looking for another profession.

The world of “trigger events” and “30 seconds to rapport” is ending.

It’s over…

All the manipulation we have been engendering is fast approaching a crash course with reality.

Time to face the facts.

Selling is dead.

Maybe it’s time for you to do something else.

Like mastering kindness and practicing outrageous acts of empathy.

That’s a craft that will never die…

Selling “Right” is Completely Wrong.

Dan Waldschmidt — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:53:46 +0000

You might be completely right.

And selling every inch of it.

You might be right that I don’t absolutely need the convenience of pump handles that auto-pump. That I can stand out in the cold and hold the pump handle myself.
You might be right that the exact words you are using don’t really matter. That I shouldn’t feel “talked down to” by you continuing your frantic sales pitch in spite of my questions.
You might be right that the dirt on the lip of my energy drink you’re selling me can be washed off. That what’s inside the sealed can is “clean” in spite of the dirty outside.
You might be right that not looking me in the eye doesn’t change the fact that you are trustworthy. That I shouldn’t pre-judge you. That I should invest more time in getting to know you.
You might be right that I am being emotional and not appreciating all the amazing technological gadgetry that you offer. That I should care more about the facts indicating that you are the right solution.

But.

Just because you’re right doesn’t change the fact that I won’t be buying from you.

And you’re completely wrong that those details aren’t right to me.

They are. They matter. To me.

Maybe you need to start thinking about being wrong?

Your Hard Close is just Selfish Behavior.

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:55:58 +0000

You want an answer when you want an answer…

Before you let me (peacefully) hang up the phone.
Before you leave my house with your samples.
Before you shop following me around the store.

It’s not about my needs or what I want. It’s all about you convincing me to do what you think I should do.

And doing it right now. On your timeline.

It might seem that:

You’re following the script, or just
Answering sales objections

But really, you’re just being selfish.

You would rather manipulate than manage.

You would rather make me feel like an idiot than be vulnerable enough to care about my problems.

How can that plan – that sales process – lead to outrageous success?

Think about it.

Why are we still acting this way?

When is it time to change?

—

This new Edgy Observations series is one that I can write where ever I am without needing to put together 700+ words into a “well thought out” thesis. Consider them shorter edgy conversation-starters. When I see something that needs “observing”, expect me to share with you.

11+ Edgy Tools to Turn Outlook Into the Ultimate Selling Platform

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:03:09 +0000

Having edgy conversations and closing big deals isn’t all about just waking up and throwing around energy.

Frankly, the tools you use (or don’t use yet) can be a tremendous asset for you being able to have conversations that are different than the tired, old “please buy from me” nonsense that you might be used to.

Let’s take it one step further.

If you’re sending emails, then you are probably using Microsoft Outlook. It’s the “mama grizzly” of sales conversations. In fact, on a given day, you probably spend more time in Outlook than doing any other thing.

So what if you could plug in a few different edgy tools and walk away with a world-class selling system?

Here are are few tools you might want to consider:

1. Social Connector (link)

Social Connector comes directly from Microsoft and is a huge improvement to the overall experience. If you do nothing else at all to enhance your email conversation experience, you need to grab this plugin.

The connector sits at the bottom of your Outlook message window and shows you how you relate to the person emailing you. You can expand or collapse the window to set up how much information you want to see. Fully expanded, you see shared calendar events, other email threads you’ve shared, attachments you’ve been sent, and their activity on a bunch of social networks.

And if you’re not connected to the sender on Facebook or Linkedin, you can do that in one click. It’s a “must have”.

2. Instant Conference (link)

Conference calls are a “necessary evil” of doing business. Getting people on the phone and coordinating dates-and-times can be an annoying hassle that serves more like a distraction than progress moving forward. The Instant Conference plugin makes that process a whole lot easier. (It’s a technology I wrote about a few months ago in more detail, right here.)

The plugin allows you to create a conference call with a single click and then email phone numbers to everybody involved. It’s fast. It’s simple. It’s a great way to keep business moving in the right direction.

3. ClearContext (link)

ClearContext provides a second brain for staying on top of all the email that you receive. It let’s you create projects that you can use to categorize ongoing conversations as they arrive.

A really cool feature in the ClearContext sidebar let’s you quickly turn emails into appointment or tasks with one click of the mouse. And the automatic task tracking keeps you up to date on what you need to be working on at the moment.

Finally, there is the ability to set up automatic follow-up tracking so that you can be reminded if you don’t recive a timely reponse to an email that you sent. Killer!

4. Liaise (link)

Instead of forcing you to remember all those “email promises” you tend to let casually get out of control, Liaise automatically captures, organizes and prioritizes action items buried in your email. (It’s an “edgy technology”, I wrote about earlier, right here)

As you type emails, Liaise understands key action words that you are using and suggests that they be saved to a task list with corresponding reminders. A special communications sidebar in Outlook is home to all tasks that you are monitoring are working towards completion.

You can get all your tasks (and corresponding notes) delivered to you daily or just ahead of the meeting that you are stepping into. It is “hands down” the best way to stay organized.

5. Xobni (link)

Xobni adds even more social dynamite to what you might find adding Microsoft’s Social Connector. It’s the most popular Outlook plugin of all time and for good reason. Xobni indexes all your email and provides you faster messaging retrieval than the built in searching that Outlook presents.

And more than just the Facebook and LinkedIn data that you get with Social Connector, Xobni adds Hoovers, Salesforce, Twitter, Xing, and even Sharepoint connection data. As well, Xobni grabs all the people emailing you and tries to build an address book of names, email addresses, and phone numbers. It easily syncs to your Blackberry for anywhere access to all your important relationships.

It’s free to get started and their premium products are something that you will easily get addicted to.

6. Meshin (link)

Meshin tries to help provide “meaning” to all the information in your inbox. In the sidebar next to your messages, Meshin links messages to relevant content. It might be other information within other email messages or attachments, data from social networks or websites, even databases on the internet.

As you hover over different parts of the Meshin dashboard, a series of “pop out” windows display key information that makes your messages even more relevent. As well, Meshin creates information profiles for each person and company found in your inbox.

It’s semantic search for email and a great tool from Xerox’ “super secret” laboratories.

7. Lookeen (link)

Lookeen does one thing very, very well — finding missing emails. It not only searches through the emails you have stored on your local computer, it retrieves messages you might have archived as your email folders got bigger and bigger.

In fact (and on slightly more nerdy front), if you have a .PST file (Outlook’s file format for storing large amounts of email), you can simply point Lookeen at the file and watch as you get back blazing fast answers.

One more thing — it also stores all your attachments. So you never need to lose another last-minute presentation.

8. YouSendIt (link)

YouSendIt helps you deliver large attachments that Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server won’t let you send. As you have probably already experienced, you are limited to around 10MB per email. And once you get around 6MB in size, emails start slowing down your inbox considerably.

The plugin from YouSendIt could not be easier. You just point it to a large file that you want to share and and indicate who should know about it and that’s it. YouSendIt uploads your content to their secure servers and notifies everyone involved. You know when your contacts download your data and bypass the drama of having your tech guys put together an FTP server on a late Friday afternoon.

9. Boomerang (link)

Work through emails on your timeline with Boomerang. Time delayed distraction. If you are a Getting-Things-Done advocate this application eill keep you on point and moving dangerously efficiently.

Right click on an email message and Boomerang provides you the option of noting when you want to start dealing with it — tomorrow, next week. maybe ”never”. Once you chose, the email disappears. Boomerang returns it to your inbox, flagged for follow-up, exactly when you told it earlier you had time to start working on that task.

10 Gist (link)

Gist is the ultimate social customer relationship management platform. Their enterprise web platform helps you put together a “people profile” on your customers. And their Outlook plugin brings that right to your message window.

Similar to Xobni and Microsoft’s Social Connector, you can see past conversation threads, company data, and recent appointments and tasks involving that person. It’s a super way to nurture relationships because it not only includes the past, but it also adds recent tweets and RSS feeds about that person.

Gist is changing the landscape for salespeople who rely on relationships to get business done. Adding it to your Outlook instance makes your conversations much more powerful.

11. PlanPlus (link)

For many years Franklin Covey was the de facto standard for “business organization”. Their software package, PlanPlus, is now on version seven and adds a bunch of enhancements to your Outlook calendar.

You can view all your email, tasks, notes, and calendar windows all on the same screen view. That allows you to do things like drag an email to your task window to instantly create a “to-do” item or break down a project in your task window into a series of appointments that appear in y0ur calendar.

And if you are a Blackberry user, they have some neat new applications that help you manage your schedule while you are away from your desktop.

Bonus: IntroMojo (link)

IntroMojo is a great way to learn about somebody before you ever send that first email. Since you have the email address and know where they work, you can go to the IntroMojo search platform and find out answers to specific sales questions. What music do they enjoy? What are they doing? What are they talking about?

You search. IntroMojo finds…

SO…

Pick one or two or all of these edgy tools and get started selling better.

By the way, did I miss one? Is there an edgy tool that you think makes Outlook the ultimate selling platform.

Leave your suggestions in the comments.

(Disclaimer: I own a lot more equity in IntroMojo than you do. Should you retweet this post to eager sales managers, I stand to make loads of money.)

The End of Sales Obesity.

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:02:33 +0000

It’s getting to be that time of year. You push back from the table with a awkward sense of “why did I gorge myself so much”.

Any movement out of your chair is slow and painful. You just feel annoyed with yourself. About the only word you can say is “ugggggh…..”

You didn’t even enjoy anything you were stuffing into your mouth. It was in front of you along with the knife and shovel (a.k.a “spoon”) so you just kept pushing more down. Plate after plate after plate…. (The toothpicks stacked up from the cheese cubes you ate could make a small village.)

Sounds kind of like the holidays, right?

I was actually talking about how the typical sales dude spent the last 6 months of 2010….

Stuffing down lead after lead. Meeting after meeting. Without taking the time to savor each opportunity. Without a thought about what could be. No need for practice or preparation — just choke it all down before the guy in the cubicle next to you can grab the lead.

It’s a classic case of sales obesity.

I got to thinking about it not too long ago.

Two weeks ago, the New England Journal of Medicine noted that about 34% of U.S. adults, or 72 million people, are obese. That means that you weigh more than 30% more than doctors somewhere think you ought to weigh.

I don’t really care too much about all these opinions. (Frankly, I’m not too fond of people telling me what to do in the first place.) What did catch me eye was a line almost at the end of the article.

According the experts, you can add-up to four years to your life by slimming down.

Less pudding. More proteins….

Now that gets my attention. Quality of life is important. But so is quantity. I may push the limits of all things “outrageous” and set the tone of living life extreme, but I still don’t plan on checking out any time soon (not if I can help it).

I feel the exact same way about closing big deals. I don’t want to check out too soon. And I certainly don’t want to get sloppy doing what I am doing.

And yet as I look back this year, I think I see some bad habits.

Frankly, I am upset about how sluggish I feel after plowing through a year of leads. I don’t even remember most of their names or why they called me in the first place. I speak and they come to to hear me, but I don’t get the opportunity to hear all their stories — to make a difference. They called me for help, because they wanted to generate a lot more revenue, and I was too busy to really help them. I need to do better.

How about you?

Did you “qualify” your easy-money deals into your annual “102% of quota” report without putting in the extra effort to land a few “super huge ones” that only require a little more discipline — a little more sales fitness?

Did you?

Probably… (and not because I love being the “Nagging Nelly” of sales writing)

That’s probably what happened BECAUSE that is what is easiest to happen. Left alone, without a plan to stay in “selling shape”, we tend to just stuff ourselves with sales leads and hope that we close enough business to stay off of HR’s radar screen.

So what to do?

Here are a few ideas:

Create sales goals for yourself that are outrageous to your sales manager.
Treat each lead with respect even you if you decide that you won’t sell to them.
Manage your selling distractions proactively before they start effecting your performance.
Say (and really mean) “Thank you…” and “I’m sorry…” to stop negativity from controlling your attitude.
Read and meditate on a wide range of books, blogs, magazines, and videos about your craft of selling.
Keep trying even when it seems like what you trying to do is not working.
Live without regrets — don’t contribute to future bad karma coming back to you.

If I can simply trade twinkies for four more years of my life, I would be crazy to ignore that opportunity.

And it’s the exact same for selling big deals. Why would you want to stay sloppy and slow when you could be a rockstar?

So I am declaring the end of “sales obesity”. Let’s get back in shape together…

What do you say?

Care to hit it out of the park with me?

—–

This article first appeared at Paul McCord’s Sales & Sales Management blog, where Dan was asked to share his perspective on high performance selling.

3 Secrets of High Performance Selling

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:01:47 +0000

High performance. You know it when you see it. It’s one of those stories you can tell a dozen times and still be excited each time.

It’s captivating to watch. More of an experience than just an event or an occasion.

Remember this one?

Warren Moon and the Oilers had the 1993 NFL Playoffs in hand when, two minutes into the third quarter, the score was 35-3. A complete blow-out. With a depleted Buffalo offense (Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas were both injured), the Bills had little chance to win this game. That is, until the Bill’s backup quarterback, Frank Reich, began an unthinkable series of amazing plays.

With the score 35-10, Buffalo recovered an onside kick and Reich threw a 38-yard bomb to Don Beebe to make it 35-17. It didn’t stop there. Five unanswered Reich touchdowns put the Bills up, but at the last minute, the Oilers tied it up with a field goal. In overtime, Nate Odomes picked off Warren Moon to set up the most improbable of victories and the greatest NFL comeback in history.

Final score: 41-38 for the Bills.

High performance?

Most of us don’t know how to describe it any other way.

Is it a comeback? an underdog story? pure passion? The truth is that it looks like a lot of things.

That’s why it can be so hard to explain. Even harder to do. Which brings us back to selling — high performance selling.

What is high performance selling? And how can you do it?

Here are some observations for you about high performance selling:

* You are baking a cake not scoring a touchdown.

Not sure how to say it any other way.

This applies to anything you do. By now you probably have all the the right ingredients. You know how to build rapport. How to qualify your prospect. How to close the deal. You have a recipe that you go to for your selling process.

If you don’t already have the basics of the selling process then you need to go grab a brand new book by my friend, Jill Konrath, that comes out in a few days — SNAP Selling. (And, by the way, I am in no way paid anything to heartily recommend that book to you).

Here’s the key thing to remember — you are creating art. You’re aren’t grabbing a ball and running as fast as you can for the end zone. There are factors outside of your control that require you to adapt. You need to recognize that. And even if you ace the baking part (don’t burn out), you still have to add your own icing to what you create. You have to make it your own.

Now, here are three secrets of high performance selling:

1. Failure starts to look more like success.

When you fail and it starts to look like success to your peers, you know that you are a high performance seller.

Look. Let’s get real frank, real fast. Life isn’t a competition with anyone other than the rock star that you were intended to be. If you think that I am advocating that you look around and compare yourself to anyone else, you are dead wrong.

You know better than that already. That’s a complete waste of time.

Here is what I trying to say. High performers look at failure as a step closer to success. It’s not an act. It’s a way of life.

Rejection and loss are not end points. They are guideposts.

High performance selling requires the discipline to look at each opportunity and say “What could I have done differently?”. Here’s a reality — some times there is nothing you could have done better. (But I haven’t had one of those moment’s yet.) I have always found 3-4 (to a dozen) tiny mistakes that all contributed to my failure.

It was by adjusting and relaunching that I was able to turn that failure into outrageous success.

Master your failures.

2. Extreme behavior is expected activity.

You have to know going in that it’s going to be rough. Rougher and tougher than anything you have ever allowed yourself to imagine before.

There is a reason that we call this the top 1%.

The air is thin at the top. And not because your nose is out of joint. Because you are pumping your knees so hard you can barely breathe.

You have to be ready to work harder than you ever imagined (and then double that).

Listen, you can lead a balanced life by working a guaranteed 35 hours a week at Target. You will have plenty to time for all your hobbies without the stress of having to change the world. But high performance requires working smarter and harder – both.

You need extreme:

Effort — you put in more value, more passion than anyone…
Creativity – you care more, about your prospect, about your ability to provide a solution …
Discipline – you don’t let your immediate feelings stop you from realizing your long-term goals…

In this age of tolerance and equality, it is almost heresy to suggest that you need to be different. That’s the only path to high performance selling.

There is no other way.

3. It starts (and stops) in your mind.

You can only achieve what you believe. The battle for high performance is won long before you ever go through the motions of winning. It’s all in your head.

Your dreams. Your fears. They are all part of what you will ever achieve. High performers think about high performance.

It’s that simple. They think, they obsess, they plan for high performance selling.

They don’t fear — they act.
They don’t wonder — they discover.
They don’t doubt — they try.

It’s a fundamental difference between those who envy and those who are.

It’s all in your head long before it ever happens.

And because that is all that is in your head — no fears, no doubts, no questions — that is all you have time to act on. And what a powerful difference that makes.

You truly are invincible. You are a high performance seller.

Remember Frank Reich we talked about earlier?

He actually had a history of high performance.

Reich was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the third round (57th overall) in the 1985 NFL Draft. The Bills already had drafted future Hall of Famer Jim Kelly in 1983 and when Kelly signed with the Bills in 1986, Reich’s only option was as backup QB. Reich got his first start only Kelly went down with a shoulder injury in 1989 — after more than three years of only playing a supporting role.

And he took advantage of the opportunity. In front of a Rich Stadium crowd of more than 76,000 fans and a Monday Night Football audience, Reich led the Bills to two straight victories. He rallied the Bills in the fourth quarter by throwing two drives down the field for a 23-20 victory over the previously unbeaten Los Angeles Rams.

Reich returned the following season, however, when Kelly was injured again late in the season. Reich provided the Bills with another two key wins, clinching them the AFC East title and home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

He is now a coach for the Indianapolis Colts where he expects high performance from the quarterback he trains – Peyton Manning.

What about you? Is it time for some high performance selling?

Yep… Your New Year Resolutions are Worthless.

Dan Waldschmidt — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:09:22 +0000

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:

Connect your goal with a larger mision in life… (turn “making more money” into “helping a small company flourish”)
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.