At holiday gatherings, I like standing under the mistletoe and waiting for a kiss. This simple ritual warms everyone’s hearts and brings romance in the air.

In sales, when we search for low-hanging fruit, it can seem like standing under the mistletoe. It is passive, we get a good feeling and we spend too much time waiting. There is nothing wrong with looking to sell low-hanging fruit but the problem is that nothing in sales is always that easy.

Closing a sale requires more skill than ever before. A salesperson must work and develop the opportunity, qualify it over and over and over and carefully listen for impact of not having the solution. They must present the solution based on the needs they identified and identify a compelling event to move the sale along. They must also become a resource for their prospect, an conduit for information and a champion in helping their prospect sell the solution internally. And when the sale actually closes, it’s a combination of luck, tenacity, motivation and very hard work.

Last week Adobe announced some restructuring in their sales organization and many talented field salespeople were let go. The good news is that their restructuring efforts will be focused on setting up a robust inside sales organization out of San Francisco. Good move. Adobe isn’t the first to do this, we will see a lot more of this in the coming year.

Setting up an inside sales organization isn’t as easy as it sounds and unfortunately many well-intentioned high level executives tend to set up inside sales organizations to fail. Here are some common traps to watch out for:

1. No defined structure- How will the organization be structured? Will there be Lead Development, Inside Sales, Renewals teams? What is the hand-off and sales process?

2. Not taking a stand- There is power in numbers and many don’t set up teams but individuals and keep them disbursed throughout the country. You must have continuity and uniformity.

3. Lack of respect from the field- If the reps in the field are weak, they rely too heavily on the inside team for the wrong reasons. They insist on half-baked leads, or cancel appts with well qualified leads, or ask the inside to help them on brainless admin tasks they could do themselves.

4. Long sales cycle- Inside sales team members need easy wins to keep them focused on the daily grind of pounding out calls. It’s important for the inside to have an easy low-cost solution to provide early adoption opportunities for their prospect. Product evals are a good vehicle and can convert to a potential sale.

5. New messaging = new confusion- When the product focus changes so much, it confuses the inside teams and this keeps them from positioning it effectively.

6. Who should buy it? Back to basics on who actually should buy your product or be a coach on buying your product.

7. Set unrealistic quota goals too late- It happens all the time, inside sales waits to get their quotas assigned and then they finally come around two quarters late and they are much higher than expected. This impacts their productivity and their focus. 

8. Marketing is disconnected- Marketing is off doing their own thing, blasting out to thousands of disqualified leads they never bothered to scrub and expect the inside teams to follow-up. When leads are so bad, this affects the lead conversion process and the inside gets blamed for it.

9. Providing training that is field focused- Skills training is great when it is most appropriate to the team receiving it. Inside sales requires a very different skill set than field sales and training that is appropriate makes more sense.

10. Too much- Before this group didn’t have enough and now they have way too much. Too much technology and tools can paralyze and create ways to avoid what they have been chartered to do. Picking up the phone and selling is a good start.

The holidays are here and everyone is shopping. According to comScore predictions,  online holiday shopping will total at least $30 billion this year. So, what are you doing shopping for a new GPS system while you are trying to prospect?  It’s easy to multitask when you have 15 different screens open on your desktop but statistics claim a lack of productivity when you multitask. Although some generations tend to multitask better than others, the brain simply doesn’t handle multitasking well.

The holiday selling months can be the toughest months to sell. Not so much because your prospects don’t want to buy but more because it’s more challenging to get yourself focused. Distractions and timebombs surround us on a daily basis, whether you are working remotely or within a team setting.

Yet, this becomes an excellent opportunity for new qualifying and needs discovery. Tkae advantage of this- especially when your competition is distracted.

After a long holiday weekend and lots of running around, you’re back to your cube at your desk staring at your monitor and wondering how your year is going to end. You are not alone, every manager has sent out forecast updates today and most are falling short. That’s okay, there’s still time and you can do it.

Staying active and fit during the holidays can get you going. Here’s some exercises you can do from your desk:

I like what the Diethack blog has to say- especially in his “arm shakey-skake” where you enlist some buddies to get on each side of you and pull your arms- should fun, here’s mine.

Here’s a YouTube 15- Minute Desk work-out that is detailed and I must admit, a bit exhausting.

Desk aerobics is the new exercise craze so get your cardio going with and try the 60-second aerobics.

My sister likes to chat on skype and a typical chat from her will look like this:

Hey sis

Are u there?

I want to ask you about coming up to the city the weekend of the 3rd, will you be around?

K and J want to come and we want to stay at your house. We can all have dinner together on Saturday night and stay until Sunday- can you hang with us? We want to try that new Japanese restaurant near your place. Maybe at 7:00pm?

What do you have going that weekend? You’ll probably be taking a few classes, how about a bike ride? We could all do a hearty ride together? Sounds, good, we’ll load the bikes up in the car- you’ll have to see J’s new bike? Have you been riding lately? Now that it gets dark early, does your bike have a good light? I’m sure you’ll be up for a ride with us.

Are you there? I’ll try you on your cell and in the meantime, look at your calendar and let me know if this date works.

I use this anology because it reminds me of salespeople who finally get a live call after dialing for hours and getting stuck in voice mail jail. Once they hear a living and breathing voice on the line- this launches them into self-selling utopia.

Have you ever sold from self-selling utopia? It’s a very comfortable, familiar and safe place to sell from. It’s comfortable because you don’t have to risk rejection, it’s familiar because you mostly do all the talking and it’s safe because if anyone is going to reject you, it will come from you first.  This is the way it works:

1. The salesperson engages the prospect with an introduction

2. Salesperson initiates discussion by asking a strong probing question that encourages the prospect to respond

3. The prospect begins to formulate their response but the salesperson interrupts by volunteering the answer and formulating another question and attaches a quick explanation of that question. 

4. The prospect is still attempting to answer the original question before tackling the latest question but gets side-swiped once again with a new question from the salesperson.

5. The prospect begins to shut down in their listening and starts to look for an easy exit.

6. The salesperson misinterprets the silence from the prospect as interest and now begins to push for an appointment.

7. The prospect is mentally exhausted and weakens their stance by accepting an appointment hoping to get the salesperson off the phone.

8. The salesperson confirms the appointment, explains what it will include, provides more information on preparing for the appointment and asks the prospect if they have any questions.

9. The prospect doesn’t even know where to begin with questions and isn’t exactly sure who this salesperson is and what their company does or how the solution can help their organization. They just want to get off the phone and feel warn out with the call.

10. The salesperson puts this appointment on the calendar and adds this prospect on their forecast that exists in self-selling utopia.  

  Last week I coached a very talented salesperson who had just lost his biggest deal of the year to his competition. He worked so hard on it, created the need, educated the prospect, designed a price structure and basically teed up the deal.   His competitor just showed up and grabbed the business at the final hour.

What to do with the competition? CRUSH it. The only way you ever get back is by crushing it. There will be more opportunities that you will win as I believe you can displace your competition by working hard, smart, being professional, and maintaining your sales integrity. You’ll be remembered in the long run.

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.

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.