If you’ll be in Worcester on the evening of September 7th, come network with me. If you haven’t been to Dillingers, you’re missing a great experience. It’s under the stars, trackside, atmosphere from gangster days like you wouldn’t believe and if you enter “rickroberge” as the discount code you’ll attend as my guest! Click here for details.

Dave Kurlan has a pretty interesting picture in his post today. He also shares two very short, very interesting stories. It got me thinking. Have you looked in your sales mirror lately? I’m pretty sure that if I asked you if you were perfect, you’d say something like, “Nobody’s perfect!” But what would your answer be if I asked you whether you were as good as you could be? What would you say then? “Yes”? “No”? How would you know?

I don’t know. The post just got me thinking about the number of SMB’s that are struggling because the owner thinks that they’re as good as they can be or is afraid to learn that they’re not.

I’m at Goose Rocks Beach. It’s not really a beach day. Mark, Robin, Matt and Melissa are playing golf. Elaine went shopping. I am sitting with my laptop and a bottle of Tempranillo waiting for Kai and Zane to wake up.

Sales Issues – Where should we start?

A stubborn CEO?

An emotionally involved salesperson?

How to handle your prospects when they get emotionally involved?

How to handle a collection issue when a customer that really needs the help stops paying?

How to handle good customers when they want to change the rules?

How to handle a rogue salesperson that thinks he’s more important than he really is?

How to handle a top performer that irritates the rest of your team?

Or, something else? How about this? Give me a scenario. It’ll be a post. If you want to do it in the comments, great. If you want to do it anonymously, click here to send me an email . Either way. Real life.

Here’s a twist. If you want. Send me the issue. I’ll recommend an approach. You try it and write a guest post to share the results.

Sound like fun?

Incidentally, if you decide to share in the comments, don’t use the subjects’ real names. We’re looking to learn, not smear.

 I started working with John several weeks ago. He’s a good student. Pays attention and participates in training classes. First one in the office. Last one to leave and works pretty hard while he’s there. I should also note that he’s an experienced salesman and evaluated as a strong salesman. The company that he works for has been a reactive company for many years and like most reactive companies, they have a busy season and a slow season. I participate in this company’s daily huddle and this morning, everybody agreed that inbound calls had tailed off significantly. I reminded everbody in the huddle that telephones were truly remarkable and that they could be used to dial out as well as to answer inbound calls and we agreed that John would make 30-50 outbound calls to past customers and opportunities that didn’t close starting today. At 3:44 this afternoon, John called me.

John got involved in a bid and realized at 3 PM that he hadn’t made his calls. He decided that he should start rather than try to explain to me tomorrow why he hadn’t. On the third call, he got this response. “Oh, I’m glad that you called. Can you give me a quote on 300 rolls of ‘stuff’? $5,000! John told me that he hung up and said, “F___ing Rick.”

Progress! Then I asked, “By the way, John, did you ask about compelling reasons, urgency, decision date, etc?” He sheepishly replied, “No.” (One step forward. One step back.)

I asked, “John, do you remember if your evaluation indicated that you had a tendency to get emotionally involved?” Yes.

Most salespeople that I talk with truly hope that I could help them improve, but when I tell them that I can double their sales in 90 “days, their response is typically “Impossible”. John’s evaluation not only showed that he was strong but also gave us a ‘911 warning”. A “911 warning” means that John felt that he was so good, that we would not be able to help him, so he was likely to resist our training and coaching. Today, we made headway on that. It was a good day.

Let me close with this.

“The natural progression of development goes from IMPOSSIBLE to POSSIBLE to PROBABLE to DEFINITELY to DONE!”

Trish Bertuzzi posted a great collection of Sales Productivity Tips last week. She challenged her readers to “Twitterific” Tips using 140 characters or less. Don’t skip the comments. There’s some great ones in there, too. Want to increase your productivity in the next 30 days? Focus on one a day for a month!

Have fun.

I went to church today and had a difficult time staying with the sermon. Honestly, he wasn’t a great speaker. After what seemed like an eternity, he said, “One final point…” and made what was supposed to be his final point. Then he went on and I thought, “Oh no!” as he began to relate a story about Malcolm Gladwell talking with a student about his plans for his future. Every time the student stated a goal, Gladwell purportedly asked, “What then?” until the student realizes that he hasn’t reached his first goal and he has to plan his life all over again. I tried to verify the story, but couldn’t. However, doesn’t take away the effectiveness of the exercise.

Think about it. What are you working for? and when you reach it, what then? and when you reach that, what then? and when you reach that, what then? and when you sell your company for a guzillion dollars, what then? and then what?

Is that important enough to be thinking about it today?

and

Will what you do today have any impact on getting you there?

You want more people to look at your LinkedIn profile?

Follow these directions.

Scroll down to the “Leave a Comment” section.

Enter your Name. Mine would be “Rick Roberge”.

Enter your email address.

Enter your LinkedIn Profile Link into the “Website” field. Mine would be “http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickroberge“.

Write something insightful or inciteful as a comment. Enter the security code. (Sometimes twice.) Click submit comment.

Your signature will look like this “Rick Roberge ” (except with your info instead of mine.).

Readers will read your comment and think, “Holy cow! Is that insightful/inciteful!” and click on your link to see who you are.

Please be green and recycle. Pass this on. Forward it to a friend.

As you may know, I read a few other blogs. I was catching up over the weekend, and thought that I’d share a few.

How to Change Your Facebook Username – Easy to follow directions from Linda Sevier.

Avoid Confusing Words When Writing for Business  – Phil, over at ProofreadNOW.com, shares a few misuses. Do they bug you, too?

Enjoy.

A few weeks ago, Dave Kurlan was interviewing Chris Mott and myself on Meet the Sales Experts and we were talking about coaching styles and our mindset when we’re coaching salespeople and their managers. First, understand that coaching  is different from sales training. Note as you read their descriptions, they may have different timelines, different goals, but both are necessary to see the best results. So, I received this “Possibility – Be Lucky ” enewsletter on Friday and was reminded of that radio interview, my coaching results and what it takes to grow YOUR sales.

From the enewsletter:

Emily Dickinson says, “I dwell in possibility.”

Luck is a noun that means “a force that makes things happen”
 
Now the enewsletter also says, “You want more luck? Be the force that makes it happen… ” and if I ended this post here, you might think, it’s not luck. It’s something else. You can’t influence luck. That’s hype. It’s voodoo. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

During my aforementioned interview, I explained my coaching process and why it gets such great results.

Most of my clients believe they are different. Their industry is different. Their experience is different and although they wish that I could double, triple or exponentiate their sales, they don’t believe. As a matter of fact, they may believe that it’s IMPOSSIBLE.

If at this point, I tell them that I know what to do and I can definitely help, they dig deeper into the state of impossibility. Making someone like this ready is a four step process and requires that I help them go from:

Impossible to Possible to Probable to Definitely to Done.

My job, as your coach, is to get you to “dwell in possibility” and be diligent about making the little changes that I ask you to do long enough so that luck takes over and makes things happen. Sometimes it happens in a few days. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, but it always happens. Want to double your sales in 90 days?

An interesting day…

One of my associates started his day by attending a meeting of a local referral group. A banker stood up at the appropriate time and said that he just got two new customers that were startups and trying to grow sales. So, he was looking for introductions to more startups. Was he looking to introduce them to my associate who might actually be able to help them grow sales, their bank balance and their need for more banking services? Duh! As usual, the typical referral group member is all aout incoming referrals and has a very difficult time thinking in  terms of who in their group might be able to help their clients.

Next…

We talked about the elephant, the rider and the path and how they relate to our clients. You’ll understand when you’re older.

This afternoon, I let a few chamber contacts know about a special program that Dave Kurlan had been offering to chambers as a fund raiser. One responded with, “First need to find out – Is there a speaking fee?” to which I replied, “We didn’t charge either of the chambers below because we’re a member (and they kept the gate). One charged $50. The other charged $35. However, Dave needs a full room.”

She replied, “I will forward this to the Program Committee but if you need to have us confirm a count in order to have him they would most likely not commit to that. Let me know.”

I forwarded this to one of her associates saying, “Now I’m sorry that I included her. Talk about setting oneself up for failure.”

The losers were out today! I was scheduled to attend an after hours at Playa Del Carmen in Sturbridge and thought about blowing it off, avoiding any more losers and heading home to the great cook that I married, but as luck would have it, Vinton told me that he was going, so I went. 5 miles before the exit, I was in three lanes of stopped traffic because of a car fire just before the exit and I’m thinking, “Shoulda gone home!”

Bottom line: Had a great time tonight. Met some great people. Thank you, Dan, Christine, Dennis, Natalie, Cheryl, Steve, Tina, Adam, Paul, Aaron, Dick and a few others who shall remain nameless.