You would think after all the traveling I’ve done, I would learn how to pack.   Nope- I still don’t get it. Here I am in Amsterdam freezing and thinking of everything I left behind. I have a hooded coat with fur, big heavy boots, thick cashmere scarfs, wool tights and every hat imaginable. Where are they? Neatly folded in my closet back home.

So what goes through my mind when I have to fill my suitcase? I look out my window and see a sunny San Francisco day and an ocean view and believe the whole world looks like this. I’ve been known to dress in what I hope the weather will be and not by what it is.  I have to admit that I pack lighter now but the down side to packing light is when all the wrong things are sitting lightly in your suitcase, you have blown it.

I can relate this to our qualifying efforts. After dialing for hours, we finally get someone live on the phone. We are so excited to speak with them and qualify the opportunity that we fill up the time with conversation that doesn’t help move the sale forward. After we hang up and we are ready to document the call, we realize all the critical and essential questions we left out. We kick ourselves because we are so much better than that, we know better but haven’t learned how to pack the right things and keep it light.

On Saturday night, I felt so distraught with the oil spill that I went to a meeting to learn what I could do to volunteer and help. I listened to angry, disgruntled people rant about wanting to volunteer in the rescue efforts. Since I regularly paddle on the San Francisco Bay, this hit home for me.

So there I sat with a few hundred volunteers feeling angry and extremely frustrated. Our frustration was shared by all as we wanted to help but couldn’t- too many volunteers and no volunteer strategy in place. One woman in the audience said “we want to do something now” and another said “use us, we are here to help.”

As I sat and watched and listened to these heated discussions, I kept thinking about how demotivating it can be to underutilize people and their talents. We all want to make a contribution and help but when the expectations are unclear or the strategy hasn’t been designed, we feel useless, underutilized and plain frustrated. People got up to leave and walked out upset while others tried to sign petitions and others kept complaining.

Meanwhile, we’ve learned that 58,000 gallons spilled in the bay and more than 12,000 have been recovered.  511 oiled birds that have been rescued but 403 have died. A fundraiser has been announced and there’s more information on how to help.

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?

Wouldn’t it be nice if prospects told you the amount of power they really hold in an organization? Well that happened today and I want to share an insightful discussion I had with a prospect:

“I’m wondering if you could point me in the right direction as I’ve been in touch with Lisa Track and Ingrid Breem in the past. Also does John Jones still report into them?”

“Lisa and Ingrid are your best bet, John is no longer with the organization”

“Okay, interesting , what about Julie and Tom?”

“Actually Julie is on maternity leave and Tom is my counterpart. We both report into Ingrid”

“Thanks, the puzzle is starting to make more sense, you’ve been so helpful. So your role is…?”

“I am in charge of the enablement group but we don’t have access to any budget, everything rolls up to Ingrid for final approval. We don’t have the power but just support Ingrid’s initiatives and manage the vendors.”

“You are so knowledgeable and helpful, I really appreciate it. What is the best way for me to reach Ingrid?”

“She is out the next few days and I know she will be in her office on Friday just catching up. If you would like to call her in the morning between 9:00-9:45 PST, I can let her know you’ll be calling her.”

“Perfect, I will call her at that time and in the meantime, can you prepare me with some key training initiatives she is working on at the present time?”

“Well ever since we started our new quarter, our new hires need a lot more focus because we are bringing another 30 in before the end of the year. That’s one of the projects I’m working on right now.”

“How far along are you in that area? What are you looking it? Evaluating?

So this conversation continues with this prospect. It is not a waster of time talking with Unvailable Power? Not at all, as long as you know when and how they can help.

Our webinar yesterday was a huge success with record-breaking attendees. Everyone is hot on this topic and salespeople are eager to learn new ways to prospect and counter on emails these days. Our panelists were inspiring, creative and very brave. Edward Wu from Secure Computing and Peter Norris from Acteva proved that NO doesn’t always mean NO and going the extra mile definitely pays off. We all seemed to agree on the following rebuttal strategies:

1. Listen and look for fuzzy words that may be misleading and don’t make sense
2. Respond immediately by taking advantage of the mind share that happens within seconds of sending the email
3. Ask lots of questions to better quality where the objection is coming from and continue peeling the layers
4. Determine if they are a decision-maker or if you have a No-Po on your hands
5. Don’t get defensive, stay professional

Ask me to send you our ComeBack Pack-a must-have for anyone in sales.

Sam Parker, one of the founders of JustSell which is one of my favorite sales resources just put out the coolest video titled 212 degrees. You’ve got to check it out and I’ll leave you with my favorite phrase from the video: You are responsible for your results…it’s time to turn up the heat….with awareness comes responsibility.

We’ve heard the term “peeling the onion” many times and it’s very descriptive when it comes to objections. Sales is one of the few professions which taxes your emotional strength and courage. You  have to be pretty thick skinned to succeed in sales because you are risking rejection on a regular basis.

This week I am dedicating my blog entries to objections. Everything from why we create objections to the types we receive from our customers and how to best rebut from them.

Tune in on Wednesday, June 6th from 10:00-11:00am and listen to the webinar on Resuscitating Rejection Emails and win a free gift.

Remember that kid in your class who would always raise his hand to ask questions? It was always the same kid who would shoot his hand up before the teacher would finish answering the previous question. You could always count on this kid because they had all the questions covered. You were never sure if they asked questions to hear themselves talk or if they really had an analytical mind. Were you that kid?

What about when you are on the phone and you start firing questions out to your prospects? Do you think you might have them in a headlock?

When you are outbound dialing 60 calls per day and you finally have a live voice, you get so excited to get them on the phone that you bravely run through your qualification questions. However, the more you ask, the more your prospect gets annoyed and by the end of the call, they want out and don’t want anyone from your company to call on them ever again. What happened?

Questioning is the most important and complicated sales skill. It includes the following four components:

1. How you formulate the question–when you ask a lot of closed-ended questions, you’ll get shorter answers.

2. The order in which you ask questions–if you ask the timeframe and budget question too soon, you will distance the prospect.

3. The tone and style you utilize–interrogative tone and survey style disengages while consultative and active paraphrasing engages.

4. Your questioning map or criteria–where are you going with your questions.

There’s nothing worse than losing trust with our prospects and when we are asking questions, we are controlling the call and leading the discussion. Losing trust can result in a bad call and ultimately a lost sale. Remember that all four of these components must work together and be synchronized. When we ask a question that’s out of order, formulate it too broadly and don’t listen to the responses, we are in danger of losing trust with our prospect.

Only one day left until the end of the quarter. By now, you may have already experienced some betrayal from No-Po’s whom you thought would commit but didn’t step up and actually sign your PO. I know, I know, I know. You really believed them when they said you were the vendor of choice and miles ahead of your competition. You waited patiently each week while they tried to assemble the right people for the meeting that kept getting rescheduled. You agreed never to call anyone else within their organization because they had it all covered. You continued to hang out with them because they were cooperative, engaging, interested and they even became your Tuesday morning phone buddies. And surely, with such titles as Manager, Director and Consultant, you assumed they maintained a level of power and influence. So what happened?

How many No-Po’s have been lingering on your forecast that you’ve had to pull out? You may have listened to our very insightful podcast earlier this week, Betrayed by No-Po’s? and realized we are all lured by what we believe are buying signals.

New resolution for the new quarter= Stop selling to people who have no power. 

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

When we are prospecting and closing business, we must take the approach that our services belong. I know it’s hard when you are calling on busy decision-makers who won’t return your calls and send you emails telling you they are set for the month, quarter, year or century for that matter. But unless we have the drive to believe their organization really needs our services, your messaging won’t sound as though you belong.

It’s important to properly qualify your prospects to know what you want to get from them and how you want your services to belong in their organization.. Remember to spend more time determining what you want instead of reacting to what you don’t have. Salespeople tend to spend time on things they can’t control and that sends them spinning in the wrong direction.

Today is the last day of the month and we jump into a very important new month. March is usually the end of a quarter and becomes the breaking point for Q1 business. As you wrap up your February business, be prepared to start your March strong as though you belong.

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