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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We believe it’s important to keep score…

Because our business revenue cycles run in four-month increments, we count on the trimester and we just finished our counting.

Using the HBS system, strategies and techniques for large account selling, our clients and friends have closed $171,000,000 in new business in the first four months of the year! That is fantastic and we want to say CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who landed big new deals in this first trimester! There were new sales from $100,000 in the list all the way to just over $100,000,000, a very broad range indeed. This new addition brings the system’s total to over $2.6 Billion in new sales!

We want to get better at keeping score, so we are reaching out to the readers of this blog, the website, Twitter and my newsletter to let us know when you land a deal and feel that in any way our system, thoughts and approaches have aided in winning that new sale. Send me an email letting me know what you landed and how big it is to your company. We will then add you to the score.

Again, congratulations to the big hunters in this first trimester! Listen to the podcasts in the upcoming months because some of the people who have landed the big deals, including the $100M+ deal, will be featured.

I’m working on some big sales right now with my clients. I act as either a member of their team or as a key advisor. We’re aiming at accounts ranging from $500,000 to $100,000,000. This is a great part of my professional life. People hire me typically for one or more of three reasons:

1. They’re looking to “double their double.” They want to double the speed with which they can double the size of their company and they believe that landing large accounts is the way to do it.
2. They want a manageable and scalable approach to running their sales process, measuring it and improving their success rates.
3. They have a mega-sale that they want to land and they want me to be their adviser and coach. I play the role of “deal-doctor” for lack of a better description.

I’m doing all of this work right now for a variety of clients, but it just so happens that in the area of mega-hunts, we’re in a very busy hunting season.

Every one of these deals is different – different size, industry, competitive landscape, personality mix… You get the idea.

But there are a few things that each of these mega-hunts has in common…

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There are so many “experts” in the world today—people from every angle and media source. They are friends, clients, vendors, family, talking heads on TV, bleeps on Twitter, posts on Facebook and on and on…

Every once in a while it’s good to dial the noise back and ask the question: “Which voices should I let through and listen to…?” Here are my answers to that question, at least for the moment. I guess I should add that some of these voices are as much guilty pleasures as they are credible sources…
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(Sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to your prospect on the phone. Yes, really.)

In most horror films, at some point two people are in a scary place and they get separated. And at that moment, the tension begins because where there was conversation, now there is just the sound of the person’s breathing…the silence begins to play tricks with the imagination…and the suspense builds on itself until the character is at a level of irrational panic. Usually the person is calling out into the darkness repeatedly the name of the other character…and getting nothing back.

Silence is the worst when you’re on a hunt. One day there is a great dialogue and lots of discussions and the next you’ve entered some twilight zone of communication—emails aren’t returned, phone calls deadend at voicemail, and even your ace-in-the-hole contact (the one you’ve cultivated to give you the inside scoop) has dropped into some witness protection program, never to be heard from again.

Prospects smell fear and desperation; it’s pungent and unpleasant, so screaming into the night or begging for a returned phone call will not create a sense of strength and often doesn’t result in a returned call or email anyway.

However, humor can really work, so I want to share a few of the ways I have broken sustained silences in a big hunt and I want to hear some of your ideas in return. So, here are some cheap tricks and favorite techniques for reactivating the dialogue during a hunt that has gone silent…

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Talking heads are killing me lately…especially as I suffer during my morning exercise. Here’s what I mean (and it starts with this question): What is it about Fox News?

It’s like they called central casting with the following request:

“Infotainment News Station is seeking male and female models: Smoking hot, credibly conversant, pseudo-intellectual male and female models needed to portray newscasters in an ongoing melodrama series. Age range 28 – 38. Models must be able to look slightly naughty, (Sarah Palin-ish, but younger), while spouting economic, political and business terms. Little previous experience necessary. Please bring legshots along with the traditional headshots for the audition.”

For me, the blather creates an overwhelming sense of doom and gloom, but as if it were presented by the Pussycat Dolls. I received a tweet from a friend, Gini Dietrich, who clearly feels the same. She told me about a new drinking game and I’ve modified it just a bit for sales professionals everywhere…
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By Tim Searcy

In the last month, I’ve visited with 75 CEOs, and there is a universal understanding of undeniable truth: things are tough out there.  Now although this is obvious, the varied responses haven’t been so obvious. 

Most reactions have come in three forms:
 
1. Self-denial – “Everyone else is having a tough time, but we prepared for this in advance. If we make a few cuts, I think we’ll ride this out just fine.”

2.  Panic – “We’ve pulled back on all spending, and we’re going to wait for the market to turnaround.”

[Note: I have not found one person that can tell me what the trigger point will be so that they or any of us will be certain that the turnaround has arrived.]

3. Change – “We see this as an opportunity to re-evaluate all the initiatives that we engaged in during the strong market to determine what was worthwhile, and what was truly an unsuccessful gamble.”

Big Sales-minded organizations are thinking like the third guy quoted… 

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Yesterday we introduced our first free eBook, Landing Big Sales with an RFP, and I can’t say that we could have picked a better time to do so.

I was just talking to a friend yesterday about how RFPs fit into the current business landscape. Our conclusion? And this isn’t rocket science, here: As budgets become tighter, and companies–big and small alike–become more anxious to show increased ROI, RFPs will simply become a necessary evil. Companies are going to want to make sure that they’ve explored all possible avenues before they make any decisions. And what’s the best way to do that? You guessed it…

So while RFPs may have been a mere yes or no decision for you in the past, you’re going to start seeing more and more of them in days to come. There’s no escaping, so my suggestion is this: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. In other words, take some time to learn how to master RFPs. We’ve spent years dissecting these things and are now so familiar with them, that we’ve even figured out how to make the topic interesting and funny. Really…

And hey, I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to fill out an RFP: they’re time-consuming, vague, and often don’t result in new business. Sometimes you even feel like you’re offering free consulting–and, well, sometimes you are. This eBook will help you determine whether or not you’ve got a shot; whether the RFP makes sense for your company; and if so, how to make sure you stand way above the competition. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! (And yes, I’m definitely using fear tactis here).  Click here to Download: Landing Big Sales with an RFP.

I want to be rich….no, that’s not it–I’m already rich. So are you–no matter how much you own or earn, you are still in the top 5% of the planet and you know it. Want to talk about a financial crisis? How about the 50%+ of the planet who are sorting out cooking fire fuel, clean water and food for their 1 meal today? THAT is a financial crisis…

Let me start over- I want to be FREE–that’s it. That’s what I want, and so do you. (more…)