It’s about you and taking control of your marketing and sales efforts. Time is running its annual issue and confirms how YOU control the information age.

 How often do you listen to your intuition? We all have it–we were born with it and it’s still there. Some are more intuitive than others and some just need to develop this sense. It’s that little silent voice that slowly nudges you when something is wrong, pushes you when something is really wrong and hits you over the head when you have completely messed up.

When should we listen to our intuition and when do we ignore it? This time of year is ripe for running in denial and ignoring our intuition. We want to believe everything is colorful, decorated, optimistic, sweet and festive. Take a look and notice what surrounds you. We tend to procrastinate on big decisions until the New Year comes and yet things are percolating and starting to bubble up.

It’s time to sharpen our intuition and listen with razor sharp focus. The time you want to listen to your intuition is right at the beginning of a business relationship because the first impression accounts for up to 80% of the importance of the entire sales cycle. How many times have we heard people say, “I knew it from the minute I met him or spoke with him” or “right from the start, I knew something wasn’t right?” These are critical intuitive signals to pay attention to.

Take a hard look at your forecast, your target accounts and people around you, and listen to your intuition.

Time to get motivated to sell during this time of year.

Listen to our inspiring panel discussion with Brett Welborn from KACE, Rafael Fermin from Genesys and Desmond Liao from Mail Channels.

They share some new ideas and tips to think about this time of year.

I just finished eating my big dark chocolate “J” because tonight in Amsterdam is Sinterklaas and gift-giving is filled with surprises and poems. 

 “I amsterdam” is a new positioning statement to assert Amsterdam into the international arena. It’s a great marketing campaign as it clearly brands how unique Amsterdam is. I’ve been visiting museums all day–checked out the Van Gogh museum today. What a talented and emotionally tortured soul he was. The differences in his paintings, which largely depended on his moods, are amazing. Here’s a question: what type of salesperson would Van Gogh be? Probably pretty high maintenance, not too competitive but highly influential.

I walked through Anne Frank’s house and spent time in the annex where they went into hiding in 1942. It felt very surreal being in that house trying to imagine what it must have been like for the 7 people hiding in there. You get a real sense of the isolation and fear they experienced on a daily basis.

So my hotel is in Dam Square, a centralized location, and nearby is the famous prostitute section called the Red Light District. I like how Nick Middleton describes this district in his Travels as a Brussels Scout book. It’s a real scene walking down this narrow pathway with canals in between, women in windows all dressed up and ready.

This week I’m here to certify a dozen trainers on my TeleSmart 10 sales methodology. They are coming from all over–Germany, Italy, Amsterdam, AsiaPac, US–and it will be great fun to put all these talented people together and work on a common theme. Cheers!

This month I will blog about selling and prospecting during this time of year. Stay tuned for our December 11th Podcast on Holiday Selling: How to maximize the last few selling days in the year. I’ve invited champions from Genesys, Sophos, Kace to speak on this great topic.

It’s December 1st and already I’m receiving these types of emails (here’s a sample from a training manager):

We are currently in the business planning phase for 2007 so if we could set something up for early in January that would be great. Can you give me a call then and we can set up a time? I should know more about the company training direction by then.

Thanks very much and I look forward to talking to you.

It’s not time to pull out the decorations this month, there’s still work to be done. We’ll dedicate this month to blasting through these email responses and setting yourself up right for 2007.