I have tremendous respect, admiration, and gratitude for our military personnel, both present, and veterans.

"60 Minutes" did a great piece on the Green Berets last Sunday, and if you have interest you can watch it at the CBS site.

In that piece, one of the Green Berets was accidentally shot in the leg an Afghan soldier they were training. He is a medic himself and refused to take morphine, he had surgery the next day, and was back in action within 24 hours!

In an interview, Lara Logan of 60 Minutes asked him to describe the feeling when he was shot. He described it as a burning sensation. To paraphrase, she asked if that was known as pain. He replied, "It’s only pain if you acknowledge it."

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During the past 27+ years I’ve worked with companies selling lots of products and services, some very conventional such as software, office supplies, subscriptions of all types, and more. And then there are those products and services that you might not typically think about as being your typical sold-by-phone items: breast pumps, catheters, condoms, adult toys, and now, babies.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with the great crew at RealityWorks. They sell babies. No, it wasn’t the group you might have heard about that got busted in Haiti. Not real babies. These are the computerized infant simulators used most commonly in life-skills classes in high schools to show students what having to care for a baby is actually like, including the feeding, diapering, rocking, and burping.

Here’s the group photo of the team and myself. It has been 22 years since I’ve held my own babies, so I elected not to hold one in the photo since I’m sure the software would have gone haywire on me.

I’ve had the great opportunity to work with several divisions of Thomson Reuters over the past 10 years. It’s a company that really "gets it" regarding how to manage and execute inside sales at the highest level. Last Friday I presented all day for reps from their Creative Solutions, PPC, and MyPay divisions. It was a large group so I split the photos into two shots below.

Forward-thinking companies like Thomson, and the many others I’ve worked with, especially recently, understand that now is the very best time to invest in their people and future success. If you’d like to discuss a workshop for your group, contact me. Or, if you have under 10 reps, come join me in my only scheduled public program of early 2010 in Chicago, March 24-25.

While working on my new book, " Smart Calling -Eliminate the Fear, Failure, and Rejection from Cold Calling," (out in March 2010) I had the opportunity to interview some very fascinating people who have lots to offer for us salespeople.

Craig Elias was a top sales rep for telecommunications company World-Com. During its collapse, Craig realized that he could either find another company to sell for, or do something on his own. He chose the latter. He felt that he could help other sales reps use a model he discovered and fine-tuned while rising to the top at Worldcom.

When analyzing his six-and seven-figure sales, Craig noticed a trend emerging. Every sale was a result of a Trigger Event that shifted people from being someone who never would have bought from him previously into someone who was highly likely to buy from him now. These events moved people into what Elias calls the "Window of Dissatisfaction."

Elias’ model identifies three categories of Trigger Events. Determine how they apply to you.
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At a training seminar I was asked what to do with a prospect who blows you off the phone even before you can get your opening statement out of your mouth.

Should you just call back right away and act like you were disconnected, he asked.

Well, you could, but really, is that going to cause them to think how clever you are?  I doubt it.

If this truly is a prospect that you want to pursue, consider some alternatives.

First, consider that the prospect might be having a bad day, or has just experienced an office emergency requiring immediate attention. Therefore another contact might be worth the investment, just not right now.

And instead of calling, try an email, fax or a brief note, stating,

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First, the response to the free motivational quotes ebook has been enormous! That’s great, happy to provide the value. FREE is an interesting concept, and I do suggest you pick up Chris Andersen’s book. "Free: The Future of Radical Price," to see how the economics of giving things away works in today’s economy.

OK, my final post this week on dumb questions.

The scene is the same restaurant as the previous post, same waitress. Five minutes later. Same question:

"How is everything?"
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If you are reading this, congrats, you obviously  made it through the most depressing day of the year without doing anything drastic. 
 
Yes, January 18 was the most depressing day, according to Dr. Cliff Arnall, a British researcher from Cardiff University. 
 
Dr. Arnall, who studies such things (and does that make HIM feel better or worse about himself personally, just wondering) 
takes into account factors like post-holiday blahs and debt, failed New Year’s resolutions and, this year, the abnormal bone-chilling temperatures all over and snow.
 
Most of us in sales–inside sales and prospecting in particular–look at this and snicker. Not only do we experience much more possible negativity than the average non-sales type, we PROACTIVELY put ourselves in positions to get it. 
 
In fact, if we are NOT regularly getting what most people view as distasteful–no’s–we are not doing our job.

Read the rest

Here’s more on dumb questions.

I was getting ready to whip up a nice dinner, and realized I forgot to get green onions. No problem. I hustled to the grocery produce section, took a plastic bag from the dispenser, and selected a nice bunch.

The high-school-aged checkout kid rang them up, gave me my change, handed me the bag of onions and said, "Would you like those in a bag?"

Me: "Well, they’re already IN a bag."

Him: (a bit embarrassed) "Oh, yeah."

Another related example:

After the first day of a customized Telesales College I did for a client, I hunted down a nice restaurant for a quick bite (I just noticed all of these examples are food-related!).

A nano-second after the server set down my food, my waitress appeared, and before I could even lift a utensil said, "How is everything?"

"I don’t know yet. It LOOKS ok."

Sales Point
Beware of those questions that are habitual and part of some jobs, but perhaps not always applicable. It’s easy to mindlessly ask certain questions, even when not appropriate.

Do you have examples of these? Either questions you might have asked, or had asked of you? Post your comments below.

I don’t care what anyone says: There are dumb questions.

My next several posts this week will give examples of dumb questions and I’ll make some sales lessons points. Also, please add your own comments or examples of dumb questions.

I called up my favorite local pizza joint to get my regular two-slice-and-a-drink lunch special. The guy asked, "What would you like to drink with that?"

"Coke," I answered.

When I arrived and gave the same guy my name at the counter, he took my money and again asked, "What would you like to drink with that?"

Letting it pass as a simple oversight, I again told him I wanted Coke. He retrieved the slices, and asked me–you guessed it–"What would you like to drink with that?"

Busting out into laughter, and looking for the camera, I said, "I still want Coke."

SALES POINT
This is simple, but obviously not always followed: LISTEN to the answers. Sometimes we’re so concerned about what we’ll say or do next we ask a question and don’t pay attention to the answer. Dangerous, to be sure.

I just found out that we made the list of one of the Top 10 Sales Blogs, put together by S. Anthony Iannarino. He’s Chief Sales s Officer of SOLUTIONS Staffing, the Managing Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, and an Adjunct Faculty member at Capital University where he teaches Persuasive Marketing, Personal Selling, and Social Media Marketing. Anthony writes on sales effectiveness at The Sales Blog.

Thanks, Anthony, we’re honored!