Distracted Driving Incident

This morning on the Interstate, I looked over to my left and there was a Woman In a brand new Cadillac

Doing 65 mph With her Face up next to her Rear view mirror Putting on her eyeliner

I looked away For a couple seconds… to continue shaving

And when I looked back she was Halfway over in my lane, Still working on that makeup.

As a man, I don’t scare easily.  But she scared me so much; I had to put on my seat belt

and I dropped My electric shaver Which knocked The donut Out of my other hand.

In all The confusion of trying To straighten out the car Using my knees against The steering wheel,

It knocked My Cell Phone Away from my ear Which fell Into the coffee Between my legs!

Splashed, And burned Big John and the Twins, Ruined the damn phone,

Soaked my trousers, And disconnected an Important call.

Damn women drivers!

Are you looking to change the world? Rock stars have a passion for what they do. They’re on a mission. It’s probably not about the money. Do you have a personally compelling reason to get up every morning and a plan to get there?

Do you believe that it’s all about sales? It’s not about what process you use, new ways to close, new ways to get leads. It’s about the number of customers that are incredibly happy for having bought from you and telling the world about their experience because they want everyone to be as happy with you as they are. It’s not about helping you get rich. It’s about you making more people happy.

Do you have a sales mentor? Sales Rock Stars have math teachers, English teachers and people that taught them how to swing a hammer and sew. They also have people that have taught them sales in a classroom or managed them in the field, but they have one person that they’ve come to realize changed their life when they worked together. (BTW, you can’t hire a mentor. It’s something that you realize after.)

Do you understand your network and is it relevant? Rainmakers of old seemed to know who to talk to when. They always seemed to know the right person that can move things along. That’s a lot different than having a gazillion followers on Twitter or thousands of LION connections on LinkedIn. Do you continuously cultivate your network? Are they connected to you the way that they want to be connected to you? Do they proactively share your content? Are they actively evangelizing on your behalf?

Are you regular? When I read the book, Passages, the author mentioned that at some point in your 20′s or 30′s, you realize that your mentor and your father were just regular guys trying to get through life. Rainmakers and Rock Stars don’t usually seek the attention or title. They’re typically going about the daily business of attracting new prospects, nurturing those prospects into customers and converting those customers into evangelists. They seldom say, “I am wonderful!” and usually exhibit quiet confidence.

I recognize that this article might not be what you expected, but recognize that millions of kids play baseball. Some play professionally in the farm system, but very few make it to the majors. The same can be said for musicians. How many of us took lessons as kids, sing in the choir at church, or even get to play night clubs, etc, but never Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden?

If I can help or you’d like to talk about yourself, feel free to schedule a call.

If not, have the best 2013 that you can!

I received this as a joke this week. Please, read it. Then, re-read the title. Then, comment.

The National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, PROHIBITS feeding the wild animals – because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and never learn to take care of themselves.

Thus ends today’s lesson.

When I used to teach salespeople how to apply Baseline Selling to their sales process, I used to explain that we use a baseball diamond because in baseball, you can’t skip a base or you’re out. If you don’t make it all the way to a base, you must go back to the prior base before you are tagged out and that although there are 4 major bases (benchmarks in the sales process), there are a series of steps that are taken along each base path that you need to take in order to earn the base.

Coaching fails because many coaches spend most of their time in the fantasy world of the salesperson’s ‘what-if’ mind. They spend their time talking about stuff that never happened and probably never could happen. Let’s go back to baseball.

If a runner gets tagged out sliding into third base. his coach need to ask questions about how he slid, why he slid, whether or not he should have left second. The coach and the player probably don’t need to debrief hitting the ball or any part of getting to second (unless they need to address rounding second on the way to third). They also don’t need to talk about what they would do once they reach third. That’s fiction. Didn’t happen and couldn’t happen given the current scenario.

But sales coaches all around the world continue coaching all the way through to the close and they’re wasting their time. I had a client who is now very successful. When he was a client, he called me on the way to his sales calls and we spent a few minutes ‘getting ready’. We focused on what we knew and what we needed to know. We developed several high level, big picture questions that we could lead with to start a drill down and that was it. We couldn’t practice the close because we didn’t know why this prospect would buy. So, pre-call strategization is strictly developing those high level questions. That same client would also call me immediately after the call and we’d debrief. I’d ask where they ended up, then I’d ask what happened before that and before that and before that until I knew where the process got off track. Then we’d fix that. Coaching is simple when it’s offered at the right time and aimed at one specific need. Fix that. Move on.

Want to talk about 2013? Get on my calendar. (no charge)

Then I read Stephanie McLaughlin’s rant, “Hold The Media Accountable“. She’s upset (rightfully) with the reporting of misinformation by the mainstream media this weekend. Read the article.

Then I read Pete Caputa’s post “5 Big Things I’ll Be Writing About (And Implementing) in the New Year“. Now, you should know that I really like and respect Pete, but that doesn’t mean that we have to see eye to eye on everything.

Finally, as I look back at 2012 and how I’ve spent my time post-Kurlan, Smarketing, Sales & Marketing Alignment, Analogies with Dating, Social Media’s Disconnect with Sales, Inbound12, Inbound Networking, My “I Have A Dream…” post. Speaking of my blog, I’ve had more guest authors this year than the previous five years combined and I think that you’ve liked it because traffic has tripled.

But when I wrote, “RainMakers and Rock Stars“, I realized how much I disliked people that tolerated mediocrity. Now, let me tie this together.

The mainstream media lies, but any Tom, Dick or Harry with a smart phone can post or tweet a lie. We the people can’t trust politicians, but we also can’t trust bankers, lawyers or salespeople. What’s that saying? “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Respectfully, do past performance statistics have anything to do with future performance with a particular client. Figures don’t lie, but they may not be relevant. The bottom line is that your prospects probably don’t trust you. They will check you out on line first. They will need your on-line presence to be consistent with their experience when they start talking to you and working with you and in order to be a sales rock star in 2013, you, personally have to have a strong, professional and inbound oriented presence on line and it must be consistent with the way you are in reality.

Stay tuned. My next post will lay out How to be a Sales Rock Star in 2013.

Then I get this InMail.

I replied,     This is gonna be a GREAT blog post!

Look at how ‘in the moment’ she is. She replied,

Clearly, Sarah gets it! You can connect with her on LinkedIn at Sarah Papachristos, follow her on Twitter at @SarahPapa or read her articles at Great Island Technologies’ Inbound Marketing Blog.

BTW, I will be at the Portsmouth HUG. FREE BEER!

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