Jody Williamson

Ask salespeople to list their least favorite selling activities, and you can count on “prospecting” being at the top of the list. And, the least favorite of all prospecting activities is unquestionably making cold calls.

If we aren’t genuinely curious about ‘why we are talking’, ‘why the problem exists’ and at least 15 ‘why’s’ after that, we run the risk of taking too long to close the sale, becoming an unpaid consultant, or getting ourselves backed into a corner answering their ‘why questions’, like: ‘Why should I buy from you’, ultimately losing the sale.

It’s human nature to get into a comfort zone. Losing that hunger affects ambition and drive. Ask yourself these questions: Are some of your salespeople in comfort zones? What can you do to help keep their Desire high? Are you in a comfort zone yourself?

How many of your salespeople are content and in comfort zones? With the aggressive sales goals that most companies have going into 2012, having a team of content salespeople will not work. The latest research shows that unconditional commitment is a requirement in today’s competitive selling environment. Which of your salespeople should be cut from the team because they are coasting?

This time of year, most people I speak with are setting goals. I rarely have anyone argue with the validity of setting goals….but those same people will either still not set goals or will set them and then not do what it takes to achieve them.

Of the thousands of albums created every year, Rolling Stone magazine annually narrows it down to the top 50. Of course, the younger artists always dominate…from Adele to Kanye West to Radiohead to the Fleet Foxes, music is continually driven by younger artists. Yet lurking at #3 this year is Paul Simon’s “So Beautiful or So What”, which Rolling Stone feels is his best album since Graceland was released 25 years ago.

What if a team like the Chicago Bears was to make a statement like “don’t worry about your performance, you’ll always have a spot on the team as long as you just show up.” ? Do you think the player would play as hard. Do you think they would give it their all?

Many times salespeople turn out to be order takers. Which do you have on your team? How do you tell the difference between order takers and salespeople? How do you turn order takers into salespeople?

Many times a salesperson will ask a lower level decision maker a question like “Would it be OK if I also talked to your boss to get their input on this project?” Of course the prospect views this as a threat and is programmed to say “No, that’s OK, I know what we are looking for. The mistake made here is that the salesperson is asking for permission and by default falls into the prospect’s system

We are officially in ‘call after the holidays’ mode! I imagine a secret email or memo that goes out to all the prospects that you may call on and they don't tell you about this memo because it's top secret. It basically says:

“Hey, now until January 2nd, you can use ‘call me after the holidays’ as your blow-off to salespeople” I have a pretty good indication based on my spies that this secret memo does exist somewhere.