I originally published this article on my other blog in August, 2011. I hope you enjoy it.

Last Friday I talked to a guy who was 60 years old. He had responded to my Last Hurrah post. We had scheduled a 15 minute call, but talked for 69 minutes because I didn’t have another call scheduled after him and Elaine was working. I felt bad for him. He’d bought a franchise a few years ago and the lure of being a $250K business was appealing. Unfortunately, he had spent most of his life working for large companies, first in operations, then in marketing. When he bought his franchise, he thought that he was buying a marketing company. Instead, he bought himself a sales job and now he’s stuck. He was hoping that if he called me, it would be easy. It would be simple, but definitely not easy.

 

How do you know when you’re stuck in sales?

If you own a small business and you think that sales isn’t your #1 priority…..

If you’d rather do what you do (marketing, landscaping, engineering, lawyering, etc.) than sell…..

If you don’t have enough opportunities in your pipeline, control over your pipeline, or new customers closing…..

If you think that sales is all about knowing the latest tricks…..

If you believe that you, your product or service are the perfect answer to a problem, but the people with the problem and the money don’t agree…..

If you’ve been trying to grow sales at your company, but it hasn’t been working (even if it’s due to the economy, lack of capital, or lying competitors)…..

You are stuck in sales and if you can’t find the reason here, put it in the comments and I’ll reply with whether you’re stuck in sales.

So, what do you do when you’re stuck? You call for a tow!

You’ll need somebody bigger than you.

They’ll have to be prepared to get down in the mud with you.

They’ll need to be on solid ground or they might get stuck, too!

If you need to get un-stuck, get on my calendar.