If you saw a woman with blue hair wearing a leopard mask and belly dancing a few weeks ago, that was me at some masquerade party in Marin. I got a head start on Halloween this year- especially since I jump at any excuse to get dressed up and dance. That’s why Halloween is one of my favorite holidays- I can be anything I want to be, I can pretend, hide behind a mask and take on a new character inspired by my alter ego.  

The No-Po comes out on Halloween, these are the powerless decision-makers who act as though they have power and keep you out. Learning how to distinguish the powerful from the powerless is so important and in a Sales 2.0 world, the following trends and realities make it tougher for us to find the powerful:

1. Web 2.0 Technology: Data Overload- with the advent of pre-call research tools, it’s easier to figure out how to contact a prospect, finding the right prospect is another matter entirely.

2. Too Many Management Layers- with so many mergers and acquisitions, more layers or managerment are being created but fewer people have access to budgets.

3. Title Mania- every organization doles out titles on it’s own terms and you have a confusing mess. A Chief Marketing Officer one day can becomoe a Chief Marketing Technology Officer another day. We may be chasing someone with an impressive title who has no power.

4. Committee Decisions- buying influence is shifting to mega-committee. So more people are involved in the decision-making process, and it’s harder to find the ones who hold the budget.

5. Educated Buyers- customers are more informed than ever. As a result, we may find ourselves engaged in long, technical discussions with people who can’t qualify the sale.

Time to take a hard look at your forecast and determine who’s hiding behind the mask. Happy Halloween!

The Sales 2.0 conference has finally arrived and I’m excited to meet the conference sponsors, speakers and hang with my buddies at Genius.  It was early spring when Jordan Zweigoron, VP of Business Development at Genius and I had lunch and he mentioned the Sales 2.0 conference idea which had been perculating. The next week, I went to the Genius offices to meet with Matt West, Senior Marketing and got pulled into a conference room with Felicity Wohltman, VP of Marketing and Parker Trewin, Marcom Manager who had Sales 2.0 slides ready and wanted to dialogue about it.

What fun it has been since the early incubation stages of this idea. The Sales 2.0 journey for me has been about reaching out to a new group of people and challenging my clients and prospects to see where they stand on the continuum. We’ve had lots of webinars this year, we’ve blogged on it, and recorded podcasts on it.  You know you have arrived when David Thompson, Founder and CEO of Genius gets his hands on something and makes it happen, the fun has definitely begun!

The conversation continues this week so if you haven’t signed up yet, please swing by the conference for our 2:15 session on Tuesday, Inside Sales 2.0: Report from the Front Lines. If you can’t make it, we’ll have archived recordings by next week.

Typically inside salespeople haven’t been able to get out to networking and lead sharing meetings because they’re chained to the phones. That is changing with social networking and lead sharing groups such as B2B Power Exchange. The only group that lets inside salespeople in.

  I spoke with Chris Pareja, the Founder of the B2B Power Exhange. This B2B networking and leads group which focuses on collaborating by changing the way people discover, close, deliver new business.  

Who is your audience? Small entrepreneurs, mid-sized business owners and reps from large companies. They are usually looking for new opportunities with a large enterprise audience, or they are looking into new resources to help them close a large deal but don’t have the bandwidth or they are looking for partnering opportunities with large target accounts. 

Why do they join? It’s always a challenge to find people they can collaborate with and hook up with to deliver new opportunities. Our on-line groups are interest-specific such as people who are only targeting fast-growing companies can get on one call, or people who only want marketing executives could be on one call.

How fast is this growing? We started with a group of 30 people meeting in Dublin, California and now we are at 35 locations nationally for breakfast meeting and 38 on-line meetings. They are pulling participation from the Ukraine, Phillippines, Toronto and Mexico. Their 5-year goal is to be in 43 countries with a million annual participants.

Success Stories? Marketing consultants have come into their first meeting and walked out striking partnerships that netted them $100K opportunities within one month after their meeting. Other people has referred each other on deals as large as $800K that closed under 2 weeks.

Are you feeling beat up? I look around and watch more and more salespeople getting beat up these days and although they know a quicker, smarter, more strategic route- they still choose to get beat up. How many more rounds will happen before we get the picture?  What can I say, sometimes we have to get beat down one too many times before we get it.

I had a round of coaching yesterday and I watched salespeople get beat up. I listened to them make calls and get shut down, I watched them put their prospects asleep during their presentations and listened to their excuses during their forecast meetings with their managers.

Comfort habits set in and it’s easier to go with what we know- even though it doesn’t always work. We find ourselves stuck in a cycle where our managers beat us up because our numbers aren’t there, our prospects beat us up because they are not buying the way we want them to, we beat ourselves up until we get burned out and start looking for another job.

Sometimes you need to go in for another round before you realize it’s time to stop being so predictable and comfortable with your selling efforts and try changing it up. Press refresh on your sales approach, take your finger off the mute button when listening to your prospects, kill the death by powerpoint presos and align yourself with the powerful and not the powerless.

What’s your addiction? The Wikipedia definition of addiction is a recurring compulsion to engage in some activity. Many addictions are used to avoid pain and the common addictions such as drugs, smoking, alcohol, gambling, shopping, food, workplace, internet, TV, shopping, spending, sex, rage, etc.  The compulsive behavior is usually what drives the addiction. There are also more subtle addictions existing and any behavior that attempts to control rather than learn is considered addictive.

Can you be addicted to selling? Sure, I believe there are addictive behavioral patterns to selling. Some are positive and some are not. If you are the type of salesperson who bull dozes their way into situations without much understanding and sensitivity but just wants to make a sale so they can move on to the next prospect, they be a sales addict. Or if you are the type of salesperson who makes their calls, listens to feedback, researches client needs and determines how to best align, you may have more control of your sales efforts. Pay attention to your addictive patterns that keep you from learning and accepting yourself.

It’s about time women get noticed in the sales world. Not only are some of the best salespeople, women but it gets old just listening to sales guys talk about selling through their old sports analogies. 

It brings me great pleasure to introduce the upcoming Sales SheBang conference coming up in Minneapolis on November 5-6. It’s for smart and savvy women who sell. 

Last year when I spoke with Jill Konrath about blogging and book publishing, she shared her idea of this conference. Jill’s book Selling to Big Companies continues to rank in Amazon’s top 25 sales category. The idea for this sales conference came when Jill was being interviewed for her book and found that very few women had authored sales books and Jill believes things need to change. I definitely agree.

Jill is putting this conference together and has assembled some great women sales speakers, authors, trainers and consultants. This conference creates a community of thought leaders in this space and it’s the first conference of it’s kind. Jill has plans to take it to San Francisco and Atlanta in the future.

If you are a woman in sales or an entrepreneur who wants to grow her business, check out this conference in November and you’ll walk away with more than you walked in with. Register now for the early bird special.

I’ve been thinking of taking a workshop this weekend, the price is right, I have the time, I know it will be good. So what am I waiting for?  

Honestly, I’m waiting until it sells out and I can negotiate my way in. That’s right, no matter how many more choices are made available for us, we make our purchase decisions out of emotional reasons. Sure there is the fear and risk factor but there is also the prestige and competitive factor. I like this photo because it advertises condos that are sold versus the ones which are still left unsold. Will the few remaining ones sell faster?

Compelling events is what we need to talk about more often with our prospects. What is driving them to look at your solution? What if they don’t buy now? What will happen? Who will suffer? What problem will they have to address? Going, going, gone.

I don’t believe cold calling is dead and although social networking is hot and hardly anyone answers their phones anymore, I am not convinced. Today, I ventured out into the prospecting realm as it’s been awhile since I really worked the phones. I felt out of shape, sluggish, and lacked good articulation. My prospecting muscle had atrophied and I could tell my list of reasons not to prospect were getting longer and longer until I realized it was an excuse to keep me off the phones.

I opened up my tools and started gathering names and calling. I spent about 3 hours just navigating into one company, collecting names and sending email introductions out. A few people answered their phones and gave me 2 minutes on the call to explain what I do and a few others wouldn’t talk but wanted info first. I talked with nice executive assitants who gave me more names and even a brilliant receptionist by the name of Sally who remembered everyone in the company and could update 6-8 names for me in one call.

I got a real work-out today but I feel I’m just getting warmed up. I like this part of selling the most which is why I’ve created a business on this. I just read Bill Caskey’s blog on Occam’s Razor and he suggests cold calling only to referral sources and I tend to believe that is the lazy salesperson route as I like to be authentic and intuitive in my prospecting efforts.

This blog is dedicated to the champions who pound the phones each day creating new sales opportunities. The ones who call up to 30-40 people per day and spread the sales talk. Keep up the good work.

A recent Nielson study found that word-of-mouth is still the most powerful sales tool today. The study surveyed various types of advertising and found that consumer recommendations ranked the highest. That confirms the viral nature of social networks and how important it is to create evangelical champions.

I’m often surprised when I contact prospects in my space, the inside sales world, and find out they have never heard of my company. I’ve had my company for 14 years and in the sales world for over 20 years, what do you mean? The truth is that they have never heard of my company from a trusted advisor or friend or business colleague.  Most of the people who attend my training session walk out absolutely thrilled and generally very positive. The reality is that good news doesn’t travel at the lightening speed bad news travels. It still ranks 5:1 in terms of bad news spreading faster than good news.

It’s been 18 months and 388 blog posts since I first ventured into the blogsphere. Today, my writing life is full and my blog is my business partner, my confidante, my inspiration and my mirror. 

Why do I blog? Mainly because I love to write and communicate my thoughts, ideas and values to the world.  I like to get up close and personal with inside sales people as well as field sales, service and support teams.

Sometimes I think I’m moving very slow on a highway that is racing. Other times, I feel I’m speeding in a 25 miles per hour zone. Today I am going at exactly the right pace.

I want to dedicate this blog posting to YOU. Thanks for stopping by and reading a post or two, thanks for the time you take to read and comment, thanks for your kind words of support and most of all, thanks for being my inspiration. 

I have compiled my top 50 list of favorite blog post- here is the best of the Life in the Telebusiness Blog:

1. Setting Appointments.

2.  Get More Live Voices

3. Change up your messaging

4. Oops, when you realize you’re in the wrong place

5. When someone goes radio silent on you

6. 5 ways to set your non-negotiable time

7. The Dynamic Duo

8. Keep in shape

9. Clues we lose

10. Telestressed?

11. 8 reasons to test your phone courage

12. Email rejections

13. Changes lead to uncertainty of power

14. Listening for red flags

15. Are any No-Po’s lingering in your forecast?

16. Learning your No-Po lacks power before they do

17. Betrayed by No-Po’s?

18. I just have one more question

19. When a No-Po has to protect their turf

20. Winning coaching qualities

21. Are you avoiding being coached?

22. Sales intuition

23. The cancelled sales appointment

24. Is voice mail in or out?

25. Key words and phrases that lack influence

26. Trend talk

27. Sales training is like going into rehab

28. The first few times it’s tough and then it gets easier

29. Are salespeople happy?

30. Notes on motivation

31. Mr. Unavailable is a No-Po

32. Sales yoga

33. Tuesday conversation with a No-Po

34. You finally get the appointment, now what?

35. Let’s talk about trust

36. Different messages= different titles

37. End of quarter sales stats

38. Watch out- it’s the No-Po entourage

39. You sound busy so I’ll let you go

40. 10 tactics for engaging a gate-keeper

41. Looking for motivation in all the wrong places

42. Unavailable power

43. When was the last time you…..

44. Sales 2.0 prospecting

45. Opt-out of desperate discounting

46. The 3 C’s of social networking

47. Sales 2.0; A Report from the front lines

48. Top 7 responses impatient salespeople hate to hear

49. What’s on your wish list?

50. Why do we can people who have no power?