Sales Wolf Blog

What gets in our way.

It is no wonder we struggle. We get in our own way.

Our mindsets, our mental models, our past experiences, our habits, our perspective, our biases and our own arrogance get in our own way. Each contribute to slowing us down from getting what we really want.

Human beings are comfort-seeking creatures. 

Once a way of doing something is identified that brings the desired results we often shut our minds off from other possibilities - to other ways. In our personal lives and especially in business, moats are often built to protect the way something is done.

Management systemizes ways of doing something into processes and punishes those who dare to think outside-the-box.

Meanwhile, a competitor who neither cares about comfort, nor relationships, nor history nor moats identifies a better way that is more efficient, less costly and creates more value.

History if full of competitors who burned their own boats.

Long story short.

It's not right to pay someone else to develop content and then represent it as original.

Longer story.

I have often marveled at how some consultants seem to be busy as hell yet seemingly possess a superhuman discipline and creativity to pound out decent content.

For some their "secret" is ghostwriters.

A ghostwriter is paid to develop content that is credited to another person. Many blogs and books are written by ghostwriters in a manner to appear as if another actually wrote them. 

This is a common practice.

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing." - Vince T. Lombardi

Coach Vincent T. Lombardi's words are burned into my soul. 

If you truly intend to achieve peak performance mindset in sales...

Then do the following without compromise:

• Hire only those salespeople who possess a winning mindset for a particular sales role.
• Coach, encourage, inspire, motivate and honor the greatness in your salespeople to help them maximize their potential.

Merriam Webster formally added "dumpster fire" to their online dictionary this week.  

Full disclosure.

I am an Appleholic. I love, love, LOVE EVERYTHING Apple.

Apple's products and ecosystem are simple, elegant, intuitive and productivity magnifiers. And in case you are unaware, Apple makes products their Customers should want.

Ten years ago we went from recycling tired laptops / PCs every two years to buying and keeping Apple's MacBooks and iMacs.

You are a working sales manager. Your salespeople see you in the trenches right by their side. You hustle and grind with them. You are flexible and perhaps even benevolent.

You have their backs perhaps even to the point where you let it slide when they don't use that expensive CRM software very much (or at all) or make the calls they should be making to deliver the quarter.

You remember that one time they slayed it and they remember how much you care.

But that is not what I mean by "sense care".

What I mean is, do your salespeople sense that you actually have meaningful standards that are non-negotiable? 

Or are you so nice that everything is negotiable?

The 2018 sales sprint begins!

Is your mindset ready? How about the mindset of your sales team?

Are you and your sales team taking the necessary actions that will crush 2018?

Are you and your sales team using proper form?

Resilience - the ultimate sales performance turbocharger.

Salespeople with resilience achieve greater and more consistent periods of sales performance than those without.

Resilience defined.

American Psychological Association defines resilience as: The process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress -- such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences. 

The end of Daylight Saving Time is upon us once again.

Many view Daylight Saving Time as an extra hour of sleep, working out or playing Call of Duty.

Daylight Saving Time is your wake up call to get your house in order.

Personally, the end of Daylight Saving Time is a pattern interrupt; a call-to-action to get my strategic house in order.

From the outside looking in.

I recently woke up in the middle of the night with the title of this article in my mind. When I began working with The Rainmaker Group, my biggest struggle was to create clarity and direction for our marketing.

If you can’t clearly communicate the message of who you are and what you do, you will never be successful.

I became immersed in The Rainmaker Group's culture and soon came to understand the brilliance behind our sales hiring process (it’s genius).

Most Prospects do not realize powerful sales hiring tools like ours exist.

How could I as a marketer communicate the simplicity and value of using our expertise?

Why would a company use The Rainmaker Group's services?

Then it hit me.