It only makes sense if I blog to make new friends who also blog. We all go to conferences like BlogHer this weekend and meet other people that blog. Just when I was wondering what I was doing going to this conference on a gorgeous sunny Saturday, I ran into Guy Kawasaki in the parking lot. I was star struck for a moment because I have followed Guy from his Apple days and all the work he’s done with Garage.com and I love reading his blog and especially his flimloop of the conference. Then I met Denise and Patsi from the BlogSquad who are two of the smartest marketing minds in the blogsphere these days.

The closing session featured bloggers such as Arianna Huffington who spoke about being fearless and the visionary Mena Trott from 6 Apart who are the people who started TypePad with a vision to start Vox and get everyone blogging.

Am I stressed or is everyone around me that stressed? I’m not exactly sure but it’s happening and I’m part of it. Everyone is completely overloaded these days so that means customers are more demanding and reps are less tolerant. Sounds like a dysfunctional marriage, doesn’t it? So the concept of rebounding from stressful events, calls, or problems is very interesting. That’s a survival skill we must learn in order to avoid getting totally burned out.

A recent call center survey found the following causes of telestress:

47% from irate customers

15% from interruptions

7% from uninformed customers

 â€¢â€¢6% from personal situations

14% from other various responses

Let’s talk about rebounding from bad calls.  For example, when you start your day with your first call being a difficult one where the customer is rude, sarcastic, annoyed and basically decides to dump on you, how does that affect the rest of your day? For many reps, their productivity takes a serious hit and this can negatively influence the rest of the day.

The choices on the best way to rebound can also perpetuate the problem. If you are the type of rep that needs to talk about your bad calls, drag others into your processing efforts and continue to complain about it, you may not be rebounding as well as you could be. Instead, you want to spend as little time as possible rehashing the event and rechannel your adrenaline to make new calls and create a positive outcome.

What are you doing after a bad call? Let us know.

I’m in Austin working with Harte-Hanks. They are a great client - the culture is vibrant, smart, friendly and very professional. These guys have been around a long time - they started as a newspaper company in the early 20s. Now they have a strong outsourcing presence in both the inbound and outbound direct marketing world.

They’ve made a big investment in TeleSmart, as their entire outbound inside sales organization is being trained on the TeleSmart 10. So this week I’m certifying their trainers to deliver this. It’s great walking around the sales floor- there are rows and rows of cubicles all staffed with dynamic agents who are on the phones. Each agent may be assigned a different outsourcing account, and you can hear how different their messaging is compared to the a guy right next to them who is assigned a different account. The TeleSmart 10 methodology brings everyone together because these are set skills everyone must have when they are on the phones no matter what selling environment you are in.

Everyone has decided they need training this summer. I started the year off slow and hung out for several months waiting for my prospects/clients to get their time, budget and mind around training. And then it all started happening at once like it always does. This is the part of my work that many outsiders find glamorous- the travel, the intense training schedule, the audience, the managers, the presentations- it’s showtime!

However, traveling can be very isolating and disorienting. When you are in training mode, you need to keep yourself in shape, get sleep, eat right, make sure you have all your materials in place and basically be “on” at all times. Whenever I get to a new city, I try to get my bearings and look for the local Kinko’s, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Yoga Sudio, you know the usual…..Yeah right! Today, I lost my patience when circling my car during lunch looking for a place to eat. My choices were Wendy’s, McDonalds, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Mmmm, let’s see, tough decision.

Luckily, I get to travel to some cool international spots like Paris and Amsterdam and domestic spots like Austin, Colorado, Utah and North Carolina. Some areas, I need to tone down my California or “Frisco” demeanor. It’s the humbling part of my work where I take a back seat and watch different cultures at work. On the other hand, when I’m traveling internationally, I can put my French and Italian to work and feel like some international diplomat.

The cool thing is the respect and acknowledgement I get for my work. When I walked into my clients yesterday, in the lobby there was a sign that said, “Harte-Hanks welcomes TeleSmart” and I felt welcomed.

How much courage do you have? How has it been tested before? It takes a lot of courage to confront the unknown when we are on the phones. And yet, we don’t really get rewarded for being brave. We get rewarded for creating a new opportunity or closing a sale, but when’s the last time your manager came up to you and said, I really like how brave you were on that call?

I believe being brave is one of the strongest skills a salesperson has. Many of them are big risk-takers and that’s what being brave is all about. What about being brave on the phone? Here are the 8 ways we confront our courage when we are on the phones:

1. We call at the highest level hoping to escalate our sale

2. We ask that one important question that determines the fate of the entire call

3. We squeeze in a few more questions after someone tells us they can’t talk for long, hoping to earn us more time

4. We provide a compelling competitive explanation between ourselves and our competitor

5. We chase quotes, proposals, demos, evals asking trial closing questions along the way

6. We listen and attempt to paraphrase what we heard and gain cooperation

7. We ask why when we get confusing responses or mixed messages

8. We listen to our intuition and ask questions beyond the information we’ve received