How do you buy your milk?

Thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, we no longer buy our milk in a grocery store.

Entering a grocery store represents an unnecessary risk.

Call me old school. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, I had a bit of a mental block when it came to buying groceries online. 

Thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, we were forced to use the online option and we LOVE it!

No exposure.

Huge time savings.

How many other sacred habits will my family and I sacrifice next?

Definition of a Sales Wolf.

A Sales Wolf has the capacity - the experience, background, education and MINDSET to consistently perform in the top 20th percentile of all salespeople in your industry. 

Sales Wolves bring in 80 percent of the results. Think Pareto Principle.

No better high and (sometimes) no worse low.

The sales profession is a mental "grind" filled with rejection, setback and disappointment.

Winning is the ultimate mindset recovery - followed by rest, weekends and encouragement. 

I am passionate about this profession.

Welcome to your Black Swan Event.

According to Investopedia: 

A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, their severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

Time and Priority Management.

Time and Priority Management is the fifth essential competency every Sales Wolf must master.

After grad school and a stint as a commodity trader, I worked in economic development for the State of North Dakota (1998-2000). It was a beautiful sales grind. 

Imagine selling the impossible.

Immediately after being hired, I set out to accomplish two things.

• I minimized attending nonsense meetings.
• I put into place a strategy to essentially multiple my sales efforts. I identified the best site selection consultants and flew out to meet and develop relationships with them.

I was maximizing my time.

Is your mindset one that is reactive or proactive?

For most CEOs and sales leaders, turning around a sales team is a reactive, futile effort that occurs ONLY when the sales team is floundering or dragging the company under. In most reactive sales team turnaround instances, the effort is futile because the mindset that got them to floundering / dragging the company under is what ultimately keeps the doomed company on track to destruction.

You only have one chance to do this the right way.

Building your sales team will define the short- and long-term success of your business. You only get one shot. When your company is founded or when a new business unit is first set up, assembling a team of Sales Wolves is critical.

But here is the sobering truth: Few organizations do it well.

Few decisions impact a business model more than the quality of sales talent hired to represent a company.

It happens all the time. Sales hiring managers predicting strong sales performance from a candidate who later performed poorly.

This train wreck is easy to avoid.

The candidate positively lit-up multiple biases that the sales hiring manager was unaware were being lit up. The hiring manager should be selecting sales hires based on the merits of their background, education, experience, and sales personality match.  

If only the egos of those involved in the sales hiring process were hedged by a data-driven sales hiring strategy.

...what?

Most sales job interviews are meaningless.