Check out today’s blog on MoneyWatch – enjoy!

Check out my interview with Daniel Waldschmidt – great takeaways on managing your edgy conversations.

Daniel raises some controversial questions.  Post your reactions here or on the comments section of Inc.com.

New blog on Inc.com today – check it out!

New blog on MoneyWatch today – learn how NOT to blow it!  Here are the 5 manners you need to know to survive in business.  Enjoy!

I was talking with a good friend today and he commented on feeling a little “stuck.” I was feeling a little stuck too, so we commiserated for a minute as friends do. That kind of talk takes you nowhere if you give it much room…so we killed it quick and moved towards how to get unstuck.

How do you get unstuck in your head and get back to achieving? Some advice I got from a mentor of mine, Dr. Tom Hill, helps me and I used some of it today-

It starts with questions- you can’t get to the right solutions if you are trying to fix the wrong problems.

Who are you spending your time with? – There’s a belief that your thinking represents the combined thinking of the 6 people outside of your family with whom you spend the most time. Getting unstuck in your mind and spirit may mean spending more time with people who have energy, purpose and achievement. Hanging around those people breaks you free from your internal gridlock just by the osmotic pressure their personal energy exudes. I think that changing up your company for a few weeks will make a difference. Changing up that list for longer can change your life. Does that mean abandoning your friends and colleagues? Maybe, but probably not. It is an issue of proportion- getting the proportions right can change your perspective dramatically.

What are you feeding your brain and your spirit? – We get a lot of junk brain food in our daily diet. For example:

• 3,000+ marketing images per day
• 400 promotional emails per month
• Countless FaceBook and other social media posts
• Radio, television and other media noise

If you want to get unstuck, change what your mental and spiritual diet. I could talk about books and articles and blogs and so on. Here’s something easier- go to Ted.org and pick a TED Talk. Best 18 minute presentations on an unbelievable number of topics from the smartest people on this planet.  Feed your brain 18 minutes of brilliance every day for a week and see what it does for you.

How busy are you? With what? – People talk about being too busy- I think sometimes the opposite condition creates more trouble. If there are 5 layers of activities in your life, what level are you spending most of your time in? The definition of the layers is arbitrary, but for me the highest level professionally of time I can spend is in either creating new things or working with clients directly on their business passions. Everything else, professionally is lower on the ladder. When I am busy in level 2- 5 stuff, my spirit is dying and I am grinding. That feeling of stuck comes fast and strong on me. Busy is good, depending upon what your level of busy is in.

We ended our call with simple commitments to each other:

• Get busy and get rid of at least 10 hours of lower level stuff for the week, replacing with higher level stuff
• Call 3 people who are energy creators rather than energy takers and schedule time right away to be with them. If at all possible, determine a way to help them with what they are doing to achieve. It’s great to be part of a winning effort, ESPECIALLY if it is someone else’s.
• Read 1 brain food book and watch at least a couple of TedTalks this week.

I am almost unstuck right now- although this is not a bad strategy even if you are rolling right along.

***

If you’re looking for a way to get your sales practices unstuck, I’d love it if you’d join my free Big Sale Factory Webinar next week. It’s happening on Tuesday, April 26 at 2pm EST. We’ve partnered with Hoover’s for this opportunity to introduce a new group of people to the ideas and practices that are behind everything we do at Hunt Big Sales. If you’ve never seen one of my talks or are just looking for a free refresher, I think it will definitely be worth your time.

To register, fill out the form at this link. I hope to see you there!

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.

I recently received an email question from a reader-

“What happens if you do not deliver as promised? Has that happened to you? If so, how did you deal with that situation?”

This happens to all of us. Every company falls short of its promise at some point.

As to my current business, we have fallen short a few times. In one occasion, I met with the president of the company we were working with. Honestly, his organization had a share in the failure of the program, but that was not important.

Together, we were not being successful.

At the beginning of the meeting I handed him a check for all of the fees that he had paid so far. I said, “Let’s start on even ground, here’s your money back. This doesn’t cover your investment of time and effort, but it does return your fees. Now, let’s figure out if there is a way for us to go forward or not, but I don’t want the money to be the question, it’s yours back if you decide you don’t want to go forward after we have spoken. If this is all you wanted from our meeting, then it is yours with my gratitude for giving us the chance to work with you and for what my company has learned through this.”

Taking the money out of the equation changed the conversation entirely. We worked through the issues, re-set mutual expectations and decided to keep working together. He gave me the check back. He didn’t have to, and I wasn’t expecting it. However, if he had to fight me for the money, we would not have worked through issues and re-engaged, let alone giving me the money back.

My baseline answer to approaching a situation when your company is falling short is:

1) If it’s a small problem, fix it and don’t make your problem your client’s problem by including them in the discussion. This only works if the problem is small.

2) If it is a big problem, then you have to tell them. Tell them quickly, tell them with a plan as to how you are going to make it right and give them a schedule of updates so that they can be kept in the loop at each step of resolution.

3) You have to be AGGRESSIVE in your overcommunicating during the period of resolution. Call every hour if necessary to tell them every incremental improvement that is occurring and each additional effort your company is taking to fix things.

4) Immediately schedule a “process review” session internally to improve how you do things so that you can get better.

5) Schedule a “process review” session with your client to improve how you work together and also to discuss what steps you have taken in your internal process review.

You don’t always have to act as dramatically as I did when I passed that check across the table. However, you always have to act. Failing to deliver in the way you promised is always a problem, but failing to do anything about that failure is always a disaster.

Many prospects are suspicious of their potential providers. They feel like someone is always playing fast and loose with the truth. The technique I am writing about today arms your prospect with the right information and questions to give them the edge in the buying process. The trick is that this approach squarely puts your company in the strongest position. This magic trick frames the untruths and partial truths of your competitors.

The 7 Deadly Sins

For us, the 7 Deadly Sins represent the “You Must Not Do’s” of your client making a buying decision in your market space. By establishing what they are, how big a mistake they create and the questions that a prospect should ask when meeting with potential vendors, you have created trust with your prospect as well as educated them on how to avoid really big mistakes.

The following illustration is just an example. I recommend that you develop your own “7 Deadly Sins of Selecting a ______________ Partner” that is relevant to your market and industry. You will be giving the prospect these 7 Deadly Sins, written from their perspective, for them to have and use as they interview other possible competitors to you. Again, this is only an example.

7 Deadly Sins

• Certification – Ask every potential partner if they have the XYZ certification for all of their staff and locations. Many players in our market may have one or two individuals certified, but they do not have their entire staff certified, or their entire facility certified.  If they do not, that is a risk because _____________.
• Diversification – Ask what the experience in your particular industry has been of the frontline people who will be doing the work and ask for background profiles for the management. Often times in the market, there is very little breadth of experience in the teams who come to do the work and all of the experience is in one or two people.
• Specification – What are the three biggest things, specifically and measurably, that you are going to get from working with a new provider? Too many claims are general and soft-cost oriented. A credible provider should be able to quantify the benefits.
• Dedication – Who is the dedicated team that will be doing the work for you? Too often, an executive team does the selling, but a less experienced team does the work. You want to know who is your team.
• Prioritization – What size is this project in the scheme of things? Are you a Top 10 account, or will you be suffering from the 11th+ position problem of priority with your possible provider.
• Concentration – What portion of the business that your potential partner does is in your industry and market? If it is less than X%, then the relevance to your business issues and forward thinking necessary for good partnership just isn’t there.
• Integration – How will the company manage knowledge transfer and cultural match ups? Your business will require integration between people from your company and any partner, do they have a plan that is clear for how that will happen to get the maximum value out of this new relationship, or is it just a punch list and an onboarding schedule?

In building your own list, you are considering all of the untruths and partial truths of your industry. Similar to the 5 Myths, this is designed to give the ‘real story’ to your prospects to make them better buyers. By doing that, you are giving yourself the opportunity to show your real value in a tight and often commoditized marketplace.

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.

The inspiration for this post came from NPR’s “Only a Game”. While I was listening to the program that covers “sports for the rest of us,” it struck me that Hunt Big Sales should create its own set of Olympic events for large account selling. Now, these events may not be as compelling as the “competitive bird watching” or “Winnebego Backwards Blindfolded Obstacle Course Driving” that “Only a Game” covers, but since sales people are competitive by nature, I thought we would all have a good time.

A few guiding principles as we consider the proposed events:

1. Large account selling is a team activity. There are no solo events.
2. No commissions will be paid to winning teams, but you may receive a title-only promotion at your company.
3. It is assumed that all events will take the form of some “real world” exercise. For this reason, food will need to be supplied by the contestants for themselves and the judges. Food points will be awarded and depending upon quality could make up as much as half of all points awarded.
4. Neither alcohol nor caffeine will be considered “performance enhancing drugs.”

Now to the proposed events…
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