I’m the kind of person who decides to organize before I start working. It’s what I do before I start. For example, this morning I sat down and wrote my master task list of projects I had to do today but then I decided to organize some photos from the past 5 years. Why? Because I wanted to find one picture. Because I wanted to send my friend Jane a picture we took together 4 years ago. Because I’ve learned how to upload my istock photos on my blog. Because I’m thinking of framing some new photos of my trip around my house. So there you have it, 3 hours later, more disorganized than I started, frustrated that I lost so much time and unsettled with how much I didn’t accomplish.

What do you do before you start? Are you avoiding or procrastinating on a project or task? I’ve watched salespeople build the most elaborate dashboards to track their leads and closed opportunities instead of just printing out a report and making calls. I’ve listened to salespeople talk on the phone at length with No-Po’s just because it was easier not to challenge themselves to call at the right level. I’ve watched managers put their C performer on plan instead of investing the time to coach and develop them into a B or A performer.

Today, I am inspired to follow a straight path and not veer off the side of the road to buy something from the fruitstand or to look at the map for a turn I forgot to take.

Registration for Thursday’s webinar on Top 10 Email Habits to Keep you Selling through a Downturn is out of control? Why so many registrants? Is it the topic? The Felicity/Josiane/Karl combo? The Email Control Hotlist I publish each year? I think everyone is scrambling to figure things out right now and this session is loading with insightful information so sign up.

Gary Halliwell is the founder of Netprospex, a new and upcoming company that is sponsoring Thursday’s webinar. NetProspex is an information exchange allowing B2B sales and marketing professionals to buy or exchange executive contacts. I had the pleasure of talking with Gary, a fellow blogger and a smart guy who comes from 15 years in electronic publishing and was President of Zoominfo prior to launching NetProspex.

Why did you launch NetProspex? We launched the company a couple years ago as a result of the web 2.0 movement which made it possible to create an on-line executive directory that goes deeper than has been traditionally possible. We do this by pooling the combined knowledge of the sales community to create a database that includes difficult-to-find decision makers across a broad range of industries.

How do you see this helping salespeople? It’s really a time management tool for salespeople because they have better chances of getting to the right person by calling deeper and wider into a target account. If a sales person has greater visibility into more prospects in their territory with information on job titles, addresses, phone and e-mail contact information  we can save the sales person a lot of time digging for the right contacts.

We make it easy for the salesperson, what does that mean? We believe that having the salesperson spend as little time as possible trading data or exporting data is important. We make it really easy for them by having them spend only a few seconds with the data and we take it from there. We invest a lot on the back end by cleaning, processing, verifying, and validating the data for accuracy.

There’s a lot of dirty data these days, how accurate is your data? Yes, contact data is like fish - it soon goes off.  This is one of our biggest differentiators as our quality standards are extremely high. We validate all contacts traded into the database, so our accuracy rate is about 80% which means that 3 out of 4 calls must have the right contact. In addition, we throw out all contacts older than 2 years as older data becomes less accurate as executives change positions and companies.

You mentioned in your blog that outbound solicitation such as phone or email could be a thing of the past? Well I was suggesting that it sometimes feels like that.  There have been so many advances with the web in the past 10 years primarily around inbound lead generation and lead management. We are just starting to see technology impact the outbound lead generation market, so now more than ever, hunters are a valuable commodity in many sales organizations. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away for salespeople to get on the phones and talk with more customers, especially in a down market.

In outbound efforts, calling on multiple contacts is the way to go? Collaborative decision-making is how most decisions are being made so the more people you call on and understand their roles, job functions, the better you can leverage this into your discovery calls.

What’s next? We want to stay focused on building the content and continue to increase the quality of the database by improving our technologies for automatically processing and cleaning the data that is contributed by users. Today, there are 3 million b2b salespeople out there and that is a massive runway for our on-line research tool. Ultimately we predict this sort of user-contributed contact database will morph into a true electronic marketplace which has fewer gatekeepers, and which delivers enormous value across the network of sales users.

“I’m sorry I just can’t help you, that is something you will have to figure out.”

That’s what I heard yesterday when I approached someone about my creative paralysis. That response flattened me out temperarily and then the pendulum swung back to full force.

Perhaps it’s the rebel in me who hears NO and says, watch this. Perhaps it’s the hopeful part of me that believes there is always a way and NO is not the path. Perhaps it’s the ambitious side of me that believes we fail when we say, I’ll try it or I can’t do it. So when I hear NO from someone else about my work and my contribution, I feel compelled to convince them otherwise.

It is a sad sales reality when many salespeople accept NO from someone who can’t say YES. 

I couldn’t stop reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  He is brilliant and captures the essence of Resistance. Yes, thats’s right, he has written an entire book on this topic. He refers to The Unlived Life as what we want but never really get to it. He asks “are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture?” Yes, all of us have something we have wanted but it has never materialized because we haven’t focused on it.

He refers to specific goals and activities where a higher degree of Resistence interferes and some of these include:

1. Writing, painting, music, film, dance or any creative art

2. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture

3. Any diet or health regimen

4. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals

5. Any act that entails commitment of the heart

I call these barriers to success and found a pictures that sums it up.

We surround ourselves with Resistance and he describes it as invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, inpersonal, infallible, universal, it never sleeps, plays for keeps, fueled by fear, most powerful at the finish line, recruits allies.

So true, I haven’t finished reading this book and no, I’m not resisting it- I’m actually devouring it because it’s spot on.

Many salespeople live the lives of artists. They must be creative, inspiring, dedicated, motivated and get past resistance. Just like the artist who starts with a blank canvas, the salespeople starts each month with an empty pipeline. Salespeople are only as good as the last sale they closed or lead they passed and they have to start all over again.

Tomorrow is a new month- don’t procrastinate, plan, prioritize and prepare. Make sure you hit your numbers half way through the month of February instead of the end of the month.

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.

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 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?

Isn’t that the way it works? Anytime we try something new it’s tough getting started and yet after we do something several times, it actually gets easier and we even like it. Prospecting for example is still something people will find ways to avoid. When you get paid to prospect, such as lead development teams, you would think they are expert prospectors. Not always, just because they pick up the phone and make their 40-60 outbound calls every day doesn’t necessarily make them expert prospectors.

Where does it all start from? Your gut- that’s right. It’s who you are and what you decide you want to create.  You are the only person who can decide you want to make something happen, no one else can help. To prospect is to make a decision that you want to move something forward and create an opportunity.

Who has a wishing well in their backyard?  There’s an old European folklore to describe wells where it was thought that any spoken wish would be granted.  There is power in wishing that has been handed down through the ages.

We all have wishes- whether it’s to lose weight, exercise more, get a new car, buy a house, get a promotion, stop smoking, etc. I’ve been reading New Moon Astrology by Jan Spiller and it’s a great book that talks about the power of wishing. It illustrates using the powerful astrological timing cycles of the New Moon to increase the chances of your wish coming true. It’s all based around the New Moon each month and it just so happens that it’s today, September 11th from 7:00-3:00pm. 

This book helps you understand how to create a conscious goal with a strong intention towards a specific direction in your life. Wishing is really a matter of decided what we WANT to create and getting clear on our intention. This is critical in sales because I believe we make things happen based on our intentions.

Timing is everything so we only have one day each month where we plant this seed. Also, messaging is critical so the way we word our wish makes all the difference in the world. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say you wish to have better Time Management. That is too broad of a wish so breaking it down such as having stronger Discipline in your life to get things done. You can either make wishes to eliminate procrastination such as, “I want all tendencies to procrastine easily lifted from me”; ”I want to easily find myself using time to my advantage in a way that makes me feel good about myself and the direction my life is going.” If your issue isn’t about procrastination and more about self-discipline, you may wish, “I want to easily find myself taking action on my ideas- seeing the next step and doing it”; ” I want to easily find myself bringing projects to completion”; “I want to easily find myself making wise decisions in terms of my timing and my actions.” 

Cast your 10 wishes today!