inluminent

From Entrepreneur.com this week:
Forget the Sale–Go for ‘the Kill’
Create the scenario that can help you establish invaluable business relationships.
By Mark Stevens. September 22, 2008
All across the nation, thousands of salespeople are preparing for sales meetings. Sales calls. Cold calls. Networking sessions. You name it.
All are variations on the same thing. All are wastes of time. [...]

Classic example of how to “Show up and Throw up”:

Sheesh.

Priceless:

[hat tip Sam Harrleson]

Best sales motivation speech ever made:

Glengarry Glen Ross
for closers only!

Shit. My AppleTV was supposed to ship by Wednesday of this week. Now Apple has gone a delayed the shipment until “mid-March” because they aren’t ready. Shit. I hate it when a company pre-announces stuff. It sets expectations that usually can’t be met. Hope this doesn’t happen to the iPhone. [...]

I just read a story about HDTV consumer backlash over at Engadget. Pretty good story, and I can totally see where the backlash is coming from. And realize, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I bought the darned thing.
To start at the beginning, I decided I wanted a big [...]

Over Labr Day weekend, I went to Tahoe with a buddy to shoot a wedding. It was my first real paid photography gig. Mind you we weren’t getting paid in cash, but we were getting a free 4 day trip to Lake Tahoe over a long weekend. Regardless, the experience was awesome, [...]

Seth Godin writes: Nine things marketers ought to know about salespeople (and two bonuses). Go read them. Classics, and totally spot-on.

I just read an article from Sales Training Camp about cold calling. The writer makes a good analogy between cold calling and putting together a jig-saw puzzle. If you’re a sales guy, or sales manager, go read it:
Sales and Rejection by Ryan Sarti
There are some great lessons in that article about how to [...]

Ever heard of the “Sales Learning Curve”?
Neither had I… but, I interviewed a guy for a sales rep position yesterday, and he sent me a link to it today. Super cool idea, and definitely something I should investigate a little more.
Every start-up should think about this before they go hire 30 sales reps to [...]

Just a note to say I quit my job on Monday. Or at least I gave them two weeks notice.
I start my new job on May 22nd, and will post more then.
I’ll also say that my former company is enforcing my non-compete, which limited the offers I could accept (I had three on the [...]

My friend Mike Orren is offering a crazy promotion to drum up some advertising dollars. And the crazy thing about it is that it just might work.
If you’re a Dallas area advertiser looking for a great way to reach people in the DFW Metroplex, you should take a look at PegasusNews and TexasGigs.com. [...]

“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), U.S. First Lady, U.N. diplomat, humanitarian
from JustSell.com

In “How To Use Your Weaknesses To Sell More” Jim Logan makes us go through a great excercise:
First, pretend for a moment you’re your main competitor. What traps would you set if competing against your offering? List everything your competitor is likely to say or highlight in positioning your product, service, and company in a [...]

If you’re building or launching a new website, and want someone to sell the ads for you (that is, to represent your site) you might want to look at this list: ABC’s of ad networks. Not 100% comprehensive by anymeans (there are plenty of niche networks out there like Active Athlete Media and the [...]

This is definitely something I’m going to adhere to…
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint:
“It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.”
Why? Because it’s smart, and it works. Every presentation I’ve ever given that was more complicated than a [...]

I bought a new Rainbird sprinkler system controller a few weeks ago, and I blew the fuse that came with it during installation… but luckily, it came with a spare. So, I used the spare after I got it installed.
Now, two-three weeks later, I came home after a weekend trip out of town, and [...]

Performing searches for information today is still a mess. Sure, Google is a great start-point for general information. Yahoo does a great job of giving us search results for commercial queries as well, but pinpointing information about a small company, or the history of a company is generally a tough proposition.
I blame this [...]

I just got an email from a potential client I’m in Chicago to visit this morning:
John,
I hate to do this to you last minute, but [my boss], who is the person that really wanted to see you, has been pulled into an all day sales meeting, so can we reschedule?
Thanks,
xxxxx
Our meeting is schedule to start [...]

I just read this great article over on Entrepreneur.com:
From those 70,000 catalogs sent to people who had never dealt with us before, we’d earn about $70,000 in sales or just about $1 per catalog. Considering that it cost about a $1 just to produce, print and mail each catalog, you’d be right to bet this [...]

Olivier Travers asks a good question here: Are broken contact forms acceptable?
I say no. What do you say?
And, to point out, I finally met Olivier two weeks ago when he came to visit me in Austin. I wish I could have spent more time with he and his wife.

Gaspedal has posted some great tips for tradeshow attendees. Enjoy.

I’ve been a big fan of Steve Clark since I started reading his stuff a while ago, but his latest post “What To Do When The Prospect Just Wants You To Bid” is great advice for anyone that sells anything where RFPs are part of the process. Enjoy the lesson. Thanks Steve.

This Wizard of Ads article is dead on. If you sell media (any kind) read it and learn.

Sam Decker gives us a lesson in the art of offering people a lesser choice:
Think about the choices we give customers. On a call, a visit to the site, a visit to the store – in that experience are they presented with an alternative to go up or down on any purchase? Do you have [...]

I’ve read a lot about the long tail, but nothing as well written on the revenue opportunities of the long tail, as this piece written by Omar Tawakol.
These couple of comments:
“The trick is that their business models allow them to make money on the diversity of interests by aggregating sales, not by averaging [...]

I needed to buy some rechargeable batteries today. I thought about stopping into a store to buy them, but then I realized, I didn’t really know where to buy them. Radio Shack? Best Buy? CompUSA? Circuit City? Fry’s?
So, I came home from lunch and started with Amazon.com, mainly because I [...]

I struggle with cold calling. As a professional sales person, selling large dollar amounts, I struggle with cold calling. Why? I don’t know, but I do know that cold calling sucks… but it’s a part of my job.
So, I read this cold calling article with interest.
Cold calling doesn’t suck because I hate doing [...]

Ding! is dangerous. Very Dangerous.
Ding! is Southwest Airlines latest push into the consumer’s life. It’s a desktop application that alerts you to Southwest’s latests travel deals, and it’s wonderful marketing.
This is user invited desktop travel advertising at it’s best folks. I trust Southwest because I’ve never had a bad experience [...]

Bryan Eisenberg just wrote a fantastic article on MakingAdWork about selling online, specifically to introverts:
We must understand and be prepared to sell to introverts the way they want to buy. Typically, introverts require a large amount of information. Questions should be answered systematically, in the order they would arise.
The point of resolution is important. Understanding [...]

I’m reading a book right now (actually I’ve read it, now I’m re-reading it) for tips on opening a sales call.
The book is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham of Huthwaite, Inc. It’s a good book on making large sales, which is refreshing, as I’m selling larger solutions now than I have done in the [...]

At the office, I’m having to define “Yield Management” as a business model.
I found a few good resources on the web by searching Google, and this Google Answer was a big help.
I found a lot of different definintions, and this is the simplest one I could find:
Yield Management is extracting the maximum amount of revenue [...]

This is how I look at the profession of sales and sales people and life in general:
Everyone on this planet is a sales person.
I firmly believe that this world is driven forward by the actions of good sales people, selling their product, be that product themselves, their ideas, or a tangible product or service. [...]