The Sales Experiment

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Have a Sense of Urgency

Do you have such a sense of urgency that you feel like you have no choice but to succeed?

The chips are down. You’re back is up against the wall. You must figure out a way to make something work – anything – whatever it is, it has to work?

It’s hard to manufacture that sense of urgency. Most of us are so comfy that we can’t relate to the feeling of turning desperation into focused action.

We’ve got just enough money coming in or the physical discomfort isn’t quite as bad as it could be. We continue doing what we’ve always done and keep on our slight, downhill trajectory.

Or if we are familiar with the feeling of desperation, we don’t turn it into focused action but worry, fear, and panic.

Today’s Challenge: Treat every task with a sense of urgency.

I had a lot of important and urgent work today along with some maintenance tasks at work that needed to be tended to. None of the work had  direct relationship to pulling in cash, but nonetheless, it can become a bigger distraction down the road.

I decided to treat the tasks as if my work life depended on them.

Some of the tasks in question:

  • Empty electronic inbox (my company’s task, accounting, and sales system): This system actually catches reminders and follow-up items that keep current projects top of mind. It’s easy for someone like me (head in the clouds, big picture, salesguy) to neglect these items. Today, I hit them like they were a new whale client.
  • Paper inbox: This thing, too, needs to get done. I try to keep my inboxes somewhat empty per David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodologies.
  • Phone calls: I had to connect with a few people. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to the calls, but I had to make them.

As a salesperson, though, I must – you must if you’re in sales or marketing – turn desperate, measured, value creating urgency toward income and revenue generating activities.

But practicing by attacking all our tasks with a bit of fire in our bellies will create better habits when the fire truly needs to be there.

Until tomorrow…

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Today’s Listening and Reading

SPOS #432 – UnSelling With Alison Kramer And Scott Stratten – Six Pixels of Separation Podcast, Mitch Joel

A great piece advice from this podcast: Take some time to go through your organization’s processes as a customer or client. Learn what it feels like to be on the other side of the phone. Would you want to be your own customer?

733: Jon Gordon: Distractions are the enemy of greatness – Entrepreneur on Fire, John Lee Dumas

I loved hearing Gordon’s story about having his back against the wall and realizing that he had to succeed (obviously the inspiration for today’s action item. In addition, I loved Gordon’s statement (used as the title of the podcast: “Distractions are the enemy of greatness.” Oh that I could ditch my adult-onset, electronics-induced ADD! (Jon Gordon is a prolific writer. I need to put his work on my list.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences – Nancy Duarte (Affiliate link)

I’m working on a presentation and a breakout session workshop for an association’s training day next week. I know my topic. I’ve put in some time in Toastmasters. But this is higher stakes, and I need a little assistance. Nancy Duarte is a presentation expert and her book, so far, has given some wonderful advice on translating a business-focused presentation into a compelling story infused experience. Now to pull it off….

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Building a Network, One Interview at a Time

Doing this challenge is both exhilarating and exhausting. Just wanted to point that out. Now on to today’s post….

Have you ever considered the expertise represented by your prospective (and current) clients?

It seems like in sales that many of us default to this thing where we’re trying to get someone to do something. We talk about adding value, but when the chips are down, we either forget or panic or jump straight to cost and argue why we’re worth said cost.

Adding value in sales (or marketing) is understanding some of the bigger picture and applying your solution in the larger context of the client’s needs and goals.

Learning How to Add Value By Learning from an Untapped Resource of Experts

Today I listened to Michael Stelzner interview John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire.

A light bulb went off above my big old melon: My top prospects are the prospects with the most expertise in my target niche.  If I want to work with the best in the nonprofit world, then more than likely, the best in the nonprofit world have the most wisdom, experience, innovative thought, and pure knowledge of the needs, desires, and wants of nonprofit organizations.

Instead of simply calling up and begging for a meeting to discuss insurance, why not call nonprofit leaders to learn from them?

This turns yesterday’s ‘teaching sells’ idea around (still a great idea, and I’m building my list of prospective teaching, seminar, and workshop possibilities). Instead of offering my experience and knowledge to my target audience, I should be sitting with them and peppering them with questions, and not questions that are directly related to the product I sell.

Action Item: Start Making the List and Reach Out (tomorrow – sorry Dan!)

I liked how John Dumas had his top 20 targeted interviewees selected before he started his Entrepreneur on Fire podcast.

I started a list today and will let it marinate. I’ll begin with some current clients that are extremely sharp and then move onto referrals from them while I develop my interviewing chops. I’m sure my blogging for my day job would benefit from other voices than my own, if only in quote form.

Tomorrow… I shall report here that I selected 30 potential interviewees and reached out to at least 5 of them. I started the list today (which is much more than I would have done 3 weeks ago after listening to the podcast). 

What I Hope to Learn

1. How to ask better questions: If I want to interview the best and the brightest, I better not act like Chris Farley in that SNL bit he used to do… “remember when you, um, Beatlemania… that was awesome”

2. A deeper understanding of nonprofit leadership, without the sales cloud hanging over our heads: Sometimes, the insurance thing can get in the way of a good conversation.

3. What makes high quality nonprofits tick: That’s the main point. And if I can leverage that knowledge to help my other clients, even better.

4. How to better build a network, one interview at a time: One of the key points of the Stelzner – Dumas interview is that in order to build a business, you have to build an audience. My business isn’t as online-based as either Stelzner’s or Dumas’s but any business needs a solid network. By sitting down and interviewing influencers as resources for more well-researched blog posts and other content (perhaps a future podcast), I can build that network.

This project should be fun, if nothing else!

Until tomorrow…

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