Those of us who have committed to blogging feel guilty when we haven’t made an entry in days. We end up apologizing to our readership, feeling our creative juices have run dry, and believing we are just a has-been. We try to exercise the blogging muscle but find days are slipping by and the blogsphere is just not waiting for us.

Well guess what, it’s exactly like prospecting. The time commitment, discipline and momentum must be there and the longer we are away from it, the tougher it gets to return. When we drop out, we actually do a disservice to our prospects because they don’t get to hear about your great solution and connect with you. We skip out on the very opportunity to create something out there that starts the cycle.

 And yet, it’s very elusive. If I don’t blog today, the blog patrol isn’t going to come running after me and if I don’t prospect today, my prospects aren’t going to ask me where I’ve been. My manager may chase me down but I’ll have a good story. Get to it guys- make those new calls. Even though it’s end of quarter or end of month, a new call is the best way to get your prospecting muscle going again. 

Okay, alright- so I have a very cool job. I get to jet out to Paris and work with an EMEA Inside Sales Organization and deliver my TeleSmart 10 program in English. I get to watch the cultural divide come together over these common skills we all share when we are selling by phone. Other than some cultural differences, we are all dealing with the same issues.

The biggest difference is that Europe is not as email centric as the states. They are not as up to speed on this, as they feel it would be too impersonal to send someone an email as opposed to contacting them by phone. The days are long gone where a courtesy call from a rep made a difference, but who knows. The biggest similarity is hanging out with the wrong person for too long with fear of offending them by asking what their role is. They’ve got more manners than we do, hands down.

Many of you that have been in my training know that I give you a hard time when you return from break late. I include a penalty such as having to sing a nursery rhyme to the group if you are late. During the holidays, I may change it up and ask you to sing a holiday jingle. In this last training, I heard some of the greatest French, German and Italian nursery rhymes, it made being late pretty cool:)

Is anyone having any fun out there? I’m getting tons of requests for training these days- a really good thing. The most requested topic from my TeleSmart 10 system is Time Management. Everyone is buried these days and they are not stepping up for air either. We’re all doing the job and taking responsibility but we’re also doing the other job, which may be what happens if my company is sold, what if I get a better offer,  should I launch my own gig on the side. That sounds like double duty to me. No wonder there isn’t much fun happening out there.

These days when I pitch my training, I spend all this time talking about the content, design, and customization efforts as my client grills me. Then I mention the teams will have lots of fun from the training and that seems to be the selling point. So for my fun-craved champions out there, summer is the time for fun. Get some sun, buy a popsicle and change up your messaging to sound more engaging.

There’s a popular radio station we all listen to- WIIFM. What does it stand for? What’s In It For Me. Somehow this gets lost in our messaging whether we are leaving a voice mail introducing ourselves or sending an email about our services. We tend to forget to talk about this and yet that’s what our prospect wants to hear the most about.  The best way to think about formulating your WIIFM is to try to answer some of these questions:

1. Why, from a business perspective, is your solution important?

2. Why is your company the best choice?

3. Do you genuinely believe that your solution will significantly benefit the organization you are targeting?

4. Can you clearly demonstrate those benefits quickly and easily?

5. Do you truly feel that your offer is superior- or at least equal- to anything else available to that organization?

6. What value will your service/product bring?

7. How does your contribution distinguish you from the competition?

When formulating WIIFM, always start statements with….”many of our customers consistently rely on us for….” or “our happy customers say they like our company because…..” or “each year, we find our customers want us for…….”

Remember to speak from their perspective.

The World Cup starts tomorrow with the first game being Germany vs Costa Rica. Soccer is a sport of strategy, drive, competition, team spirit and focus. Sales has the same qualities- let the games begin.

Last night at the Hotel Sofitel, some of the brightest and most ambitious inside sales managers from Silicon Valley gathered for our Sales Management Forum summer series. My friend and business colleague Shelly Davenport and I have designed a summer series with vibrant topics such as Got Talent?, Motivating with Metrics and Emails that Influence.

Shelly and I have talked for many years about developing this group we call the silent heroes. Shelly is a heavy hitter in the telebusiness world, having started at Oracle then moving to Hyperion and making a splash at Salesforce.com. She’s mentored many inside sales managers in her days as a Director. We complement each other well as my background is at the team level, and I’ve trained thousands of inside sales champions who are now managers too.

Today, these inside sales managers are tasked to grow, develop and drive revenues for their growing and very diverse teams. One problem- they never received any instructions, manuals or lessons on how to do this. 95% of inside sales managers started off as individual contributors and the skills that got them promoted are not the same skills they need to manage their teams. Where do they go for training? HR? Leadership training? There isn’t any training out there that addresses their extremely complex role and growing responsibilities. As inside sales continues to grow, there’s a big demand for good inside sales managers. Many of them learn as they go along, but all agree they could use some tips, ideas, cheat sheet and general validation!

So our topic on Got Talent? last night was fun and highly interactive. We focused on how to spot talent, develop it, and know when to let go of it. We discussed having a strong balance of A-B-C players in your mix and cautioned managers to not spend so much time on their A players, but have strong development strategies for growing their B players and C players too.

Would you consider yourself an A or B or C player? Tell us about your manager and if they have the ability to mentor you.

Listen to our dynamic panel discussion sound off about call recordings. Inside sales champions Josh Lenn from Acteva, Wendy Oringdulph from Agilent and Jay Sahourieh from Paypal join Inside Sales Manager Mike Lassalle from VeriSign.

Tme to jump on board and integrate call recordings into your skill development strategy.