1. Choose to like people first – Most people meet someone and wait to determine whether or not they like them. For me, in business it has been a more successful route to choose to like them before I meet them, and then decide as I spend time with them what it is I like most about them. They can feel it, and will like you back.

2. Choose to engage – Sit in the front row of life, ask questions, make comments, participate in discussions. Write, videotape, blog, post up, tweet….something. Engage. The most interesting and successful people I know engage wherever they are.

3. Choose to be valuable – There are valuable things you can do for other people every day. Make a connection, give direction, provide a favor. It is a choice to keep score item by item in life- trying to get every chit of expenditure paid for or paid off in real time. Don’t.  Don’t work for immediate parity. The universe is benevolent. Put more into it than you expect to get every day and don’t keep score. It’ll work out.

4. Choose your teachers – Bosses, professors, pastors and mentors are all teachers. You have to choose to whom you listen. Many people in the role have neither the heart nor brain for it. Be careful whose counsel you seek or listen too. The world is full of the unqualified, but well-intentioned. Just because they have the title or role does not mean they have the merit.

5. Choose with whom you spend time – A mentor of mine, Dr. Tom Hill, once said to me, “Tell me who the 6 people are you spend the most time with outside of your family and I will tell you your future.” We all norm to our surroundings. If you are with ambitious people, you will be more ambitious. If you are with generous people, you will become more generous. If you are with dullards, slackers and “volunteering victims”….well, do the math.

6. Choose to invest in yourself – Don’t wait for the system, the school, your parents, company or others to invest in you. Put down your own money and time all of the time to develop your mind, body and skills. It is the one investment over which you have control and it will yield better than any stock, bond or security.

7. Choose with whom to compare yourself – You are going to benchmark your life. We all do it. When you do, look at the whole picture. Don’t look at a man’s car with envy if you don’t envy who he is as a person or what he has to do to get the car. Most of the people in the world’s lives do not give insight into how you can improve yourself or life. Emulate the 360 degree winners. The people winning in their marriage, their faith, their money, their children, their work and community contribution – these you should learn from. This whole life is out of balance so forget that fantasy of a life in balance. However, the real winners do find harmony and that is worth emulating.

Recently two events coincided that caused me to consider what I think I know about sales and where that originates.

I was teaching an entry-level class on “Sales” at Indiana Wesleyan University. One of the students asked me after class how I got started on a career in sales and where I learned my first lessons.

Two days later we celebrated my father’s 70^th birthday. He of course was the answer to the questions of the student.

I traveled with my father during the summer each year for a number of years as I was growing up while he was a regional sales rep in the Midwest. Over those many miles in the car and the sales calls I accompanied him on, he passed on a number of truths.

I have tried to capture some of those truths here in honor of my heritage and his 70^th birthday:

Sales Success – “Sales success is 90% process and 10% magic”, (a personal favorite). “If you follow your process you earn the right to perform your magic.”

Compensation -– “Never mess with a salesman’s money.” And “A compensation plan should be easy enough that a sales guy can calculate his commission in the time it takes to leave the customer’s door and get to the door of his car.”

Closing – “Never be afraid to ask for a commitment from someone. Any kind of commitment. A commitment to buy, to consider, or to take your call in 6 months. When you are selling, your job is to get commitments for the investment of your time. Even if the commitment is to never see you again, you still know where you stand and you won’t have wasted your time.”

Persistence – (at the end of a long day, we were sitting at a gas station telephone booth and Dad was dropping dimes in while I was giving him the phone numbers of local companies to call for appointments the next day on a hot August evening) -“The other guys have knocked off for the day and their drinking a beer or watching TV. Because we’re making our calls and following our process we’re going to get at least one more appointment than they will. That’s what makes the difference between being the best professional sales person you can be and just being a guy who sells.”

Listening – “Selling is about asking questions and then listening really close to everything. If you are presenting and not asking questions, you’re driving at night without headlights.”

Wrong Prospects – “Some people do not deserve the help we can bring them. Never worry about them, just pick up your stuff and keep moving.”

Right Prospects – “Some times when you are with good people talking about real opportunities, it’s like church or a perfect round of golf or a great meal, it just doesn’t get any better.”

Reading Minds – “You never know what the other guy is thinking exactly, but you always know he is thinking about himself. “How does this help me?” or “How can I use this information?” or “How soon can I get this guy out of my office?” He is not thinking about you directly, ever.”

Gratitude – “You can’t thank people too much. Thank them for their time, for their consideration, for their order, for their business. Every person you speak too is giving you a gift and you need to be thankful for it.”

I am just scratching the surface, but these are a few of the jewels. Happy 70^th Dad, I look forward to the next 70.

Ideas have power. And there’s nothing more powerful than watching ideas spread.

A while back I was contacted by a reporter for the Financial Times of London, looking to do a story on small companies hunting big deals. It’s what we do at Hunt Big Sales, and it’s so exciting to see the idea taking hold around the world. Here’s the message Londoners saw in their morning paper:

“Small companies too often focus on their advantages and unique value proposition when selling to bigger companies. Those benefits open the door, but closing the sale comes from overcoming their fears over your size and resources.

“Smaller companies need to ask themselves: what would scare this prospect about buying from us? Prepare your answers and deliver them regardless of whether the company asks.

“Many small companies lose big sales not because they hunt for too few, but because they hunt for too many. I advise small companies to create a rubric for evaluating their largest prospects. How that opportunity scores will determine whether or not a small company should expend the effort. These rubrics should be customised for each business, but a few standard questions include: do we have an executive sponsor in this prospect, what difference will we make compared with other competitors, how long has the incumbent been in place, and how many bid cycles have they survived?”

You can read the rest of the articles at the Financial Times web site (registration is required), but this post is about more than tooting my own horn.

If you’re reading this, you’re already on the ground level of this movement. People are in the process of rethinking what is possible for themselves and their businesses. The old rules no longer apply: now it’s about who has earned the big deal, not who is entitled to it.

We’ve seen how this can change business on this side of the pond. Now, it’s going global.

Things are about to get very interesting.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” -Jack Kerouac,

You have to be crazy to want to “double your double,” to double the speed at which you double the size of your company. Thank God for the Mad Ones of 2010.

As we were doing our review of the year and planning for the new year, a theme revealed itself- We love the Mad Ones. The clients and projects that drove our greatest passions and growth were from the small universe of people who fit Jack Kerouac’s description….

Matty, Ally-Boy, Rob Daddy, Mama Bear, Kohai, Sonny-D-Madcap, Klaus, Backstreet Boys, Joe-Mack-Baby, Markie-Mark, the Dick, Shelly-Hell, Wild Bill, Winnie-lou…and many un-nicknamed, but just as mad people…

This last year, this group of crazies sold more, yelled louder, laughed harder, fought stronger… They got bigger and they made us better.

Our favorite work, our best work, happened with the Mad Ones. Bloody mad, every single one of them. So, we at Hunt Big Sales will open a bottle and raise a glass to the great Mad Ones of 2010. We are looking forward to a great 2011 with them and as many Mad Ones as we can find…

I just finished a 16-day trip to Asia with my son and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life.

I don’t often write about personal things in this blog- but so many of you were helpful when I asked for suggestions for this trip that I wanted to let you know how it went. However, I am not going to give you a travelogue of the trip- I just want to take a few minutes and tell you about what I learned in the process of planning and having this incredibly special trip with my son, a gift to him for his graduation from high school.

First, in full disclosure, the idea of doing this trip was taken from a great friend of mine, Eric Protzman. When each of his children graduated from high-school, he took them on a long trip to anywhere that they wanted to go. The deal was that it would be just the two of them, they had to help with the planning and it had to be someplace that they had not been before.

When I asked for some context from Eric, he laid it out this way:

“Tom, you will never have a chance to have this time with your child again. They won’t be able to take the time from school, commitments, spouses or children or careers to do a trip like this except at this very particular time in their lives- right after they graduate high-school. Also, it is the perfect time to re-write some of the rules of your relationship. They are probably 18, a legal adult and are making a huge transition from your house to college and a different life. This creates the opportunity to mark that transition and re-set your relationship. And, if you do it right, it will be a priceless experience for both of you.”

Believe it or not, this turned out to be an understatement.

Zach chose China at age 12- which is when I had heard about this from Eric and the first time I discussed it with Zach. He stuck with that location without change through graduation. Eric’s kids took different paths- one wanted the Beatles trip through all of their milestone spots in Great Britain, the other wanted a backpacking trip through Central America. The location is not necessarily important as long as it is new, challenging and away from here. I personally think off of the continent is great because it puts you and your graduate on more even footing and out of the easy norms of TV, cell-phone and internet habits.

I started saving for the trip then. Stored up my points from credit cards and frequent flyer programs, (gratefully, all of the airlines have basically merged, so all my points came together into one account. Who could have predicted that?), set money aside and Zach started saving money then as well with his own special account.

About a year ago we started planning, asking for ideas from readers like you and my personal network, got a travel agent and worked out an itinerary.

Those basic mechanics aside, here is what I want to tell you:

IT’S AMAZING!

We bonded. We talked about everything, saw everything, did all sorts of “firsts” together and created a shared library of experiences that are just ours to share forever. On top of that, we are not in the same place in our relationship as when we left. Is he a man now? I don’t know if I would go that far, (seems to lack things like a job, real responsibilities, a mortgage, the ability to grow a credible beard in two weeks even though he tried, and so on). But, we relate to each other differently already.

Some guidelines I want to pass along to you…

1. No lecturing or teaching allowed. I made a deal with myself that if we were going to have this trip it was a travel trip together, not a field trip for my ongoing development of him.
2. Do new stuff. Part of what made this trip memorable was the “firsts” we did together, including doing things that I would not normally do. We raced motorcycle taxis through Bangkok at rush hour, drank 120 proof Chinese liquor in Beijing, played blackjack in Macau and so on. I have pictures of 20 buddhas from temples in China, but I guarantee that the buddhas won’t be the stories we will tell at the family gatherings for years to come, it will be these and some others I can’t publish.
3. Traveling together. I did not set out rules for how we would travel together- too much dad v. kid in that. We just talked through how we would travel and what would make it work better. Simple stuff – he stays up late and gets up late- I’m the opposite. He sleeps with the TV on and has it on all of the time, I never do. I pack in an orderly fashion and ahead of time, he looks like he is jumping bail. We worked this out beforehand with one goal; making the trip better.
4. Planning. I took the majority of the responsibility for the logistics of the trip, but we worked through what was important to him in each location and what we could get done. Part of it was money management, part of it has to do with prior experience in travel and part of it was time.
5. Shut out the world. I am not kidding when I say that this is a once in a lifetime experience. If you get sucked into blackberry, email and voicemail back in the real world, you will be trading out something short-term for something priceless and permanent. We made calls home for 5 minutes at the end of the day, (morning here), each day and that was pretty much it.

I am the zealously converted now. The graduation trip is the most amazing thing that you can do with your child as you transition into a new phase in your lives and relationship.

Let me offer my great thanks to all of you who gave suggestions of “must-see” sights for our trip. We followed your recommendations closely and our trip was vastly better for it.

If you have children of any age under graduation age, I recommend that you plant the seed of the idea now, open the bank account and prepare for a graduation trip present.