The Blog Nobody Dreams Of

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." The implication is clear...if you do not try...you will not succeed This is true in sales where if you don't ask for the sale you can't get the sale. It's also true in everyday life.There have been instances in my life where I wanted to meet someone but it seemed far-fetched that they would would make time for someone they didn't know. So I asked.

William Shakespeare said, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” I have often said if I had a time machine, I would go back in time to the late 1500s to early 1600s and throat-punch Shakespeare for talking so weirdly. I went to too many school plays where I didn’t know what the hell they were saying…but I digress. The dude’s point is spot on; no one should not blame God or some other uncontrollable force for how their life turns out. You have a certain amount of power to make your life better. There are ways to work for a better future. And while it may be hard and sometimes feel impossible, if you want a perfect job for yourself, why not try to create it?

am not normally prone to BS headlines like I used for this post, but I wear my emotions on my sleeve and speak pretty plainly. One of the things I knew I would focus on when I retired was to evangelize about sales careers. The difference is that I was always going to focus on WHY someone should become a salesperson. I wasn’t going to focus on the HOW to sell.

Country singer Toby Keith recently passed away. I remember watching the biography of country singer Toby Keith recently and was intrigued by the controversy of his song, "How Do You Like Me Now?" It's about a guy who couldn't get the attention of his dream girl in high school. The guy ultimately becomes rich and famous and the song is basically a declaration of "in your face girls!" There are all kinds of motivation...positive and negative.

Many of you know about my homeless initiative...if not you can learn about it over at ConnectTheDots.cc. I've been working on my manifesto for over a year in a Google doc. The other day I was searching for that doc and typed "my manifesto" into what I thought was the Google Docs search bar. Turns out the search was in Google itself and I saw a bunch of items for writing your own manifesto. That got me thinking, if you are selling anything, a solution to the homeless problem a technology solution, or any product or service, it would be a great idea to develop a manifesto to guide you and explain to people what drives you.

Tim Denning recently wrote an article titled, "If You Fit In, You Are Replaceable." It wasn't geared towards salespeople but it absolutely applies. Take my career for example. I started out selling radio advertising. I had spent the few years selling radio ads to traditional customers like car dealers and furniture stores. I wanted to separate myself from all the other radio salespeople, including the ones at my own station. So I figured out what kinds of businesses weren’t being targeted. I also wanted to do “direct response” advertising. 

That's the title of a post I did 15 years ago on a old Type Pad blog that I found is still active. Here's the crazy part, everything in that post is still relevant (I never went or go for fads in business). The post references an article in the Wall Street Journal about the overbuilding of warehouses in Phoenix. Ummmm.....there's a massive commercial real estate bubble happening right now. Take a look at the post below and see that the same opportunities in 2009 for creative sales people...

I learned I was wealthy today. I came across this article about "Bookshelf Wealth" and how people love to display their books. That's me....guilty as charged! To no one's surprise there are people who love the term and others who went off. I am a simple person, I just love books and love displaying them. It started out with me displaying books that I had got autographed by the author.

So why do a post on what not to do? Because learning from mistakes, your own or others, always provides valuable advice. When I sold SharePoint training my instructors did a lot of SharePoint consulting. That carried a lot of weight with potential students. What carried even more weight was the fact my guys fixed a lot of SharePoint mistakes others made.

Professional selling is far from the negative stereotypes that often are associated with being a salesperson. In fact, professional selling is simply a skill that requires the ability to understand the customer needs, build trust, and communicate effectively. How complex that conversation depends on the complexity of what you are selling.

A few weeks ago I got involved in a thread here on LinkedIn about what to do after an interview. I piped in and said you should send a hand-written thank you note. I was stunned how much push back I got...

I was digging into some old Drop Box files and found this speech I did at Toastmasters back in the Cenozoic era. There's still a lot of truth to this, especially concerning personal development. If you are trying to change the world however (my homeless initiative) then you need to yell from every single mountain top.