From time to time I record impromptu unscripted rants as well as some that are more well thought-out videos.  From among the collection presented below, most are rants so the rants are much more popular.  The most-watched (I have added to the list so there are more than 10 now!) videos are shown below in order of popularity and while I like all of them, I indicated my personal favorites with an asterisk.  All but three of the videos are three-minutes or less, one is six-minutes, one is ten-minutes and one is eight-minutes.  Topics include:

1. Revenue Sensitivity - a rant on the lack of correlation between top salespeople and revenue

2. On Sales Process and Methodology - the difference between popular sales processes and methodologies

3. Why Your Prospects Won't Talk with You and What to Do About it - a rant

4. On Attracting Salespeople When Recruiting - a rant on the Two Keys to Attracting More of the Right Sales Candidates

5. Transactional versus Consultative Selling - a rant

6. Why Forecasts are Always So Inaccurate - a rant on why it's not the forecast!

7. Dinger's Listening Skills - how my Dog's Listening Skills are better than those of most salespeople

8. Protect Your References - a rant on why you shouldn't give out references unless it's the perfect time

9. Why People Should Consider a Career in Sales

10. On Cold Calls - a Rant

11. Nothing has Changed in 35 Years - a Rant

12. On Not Getting Distracted

13. How to Shorten and Speed Up the Sales Process

14. Why Sales Training Doesn't Work

15. The Importance of Momentum in Sales

16. Momentum Part 2 - The Importance of Discipline and Consistency and Why You Need Both

17. Don't Make This Critical Mistake as We Move Forward into the Recession

18. Sales and the Importance of Having a Quality Conversation

19. Why Do Salespeople Chase So Many Unsellable Opportunities?

20. The Importance of Getting Your Messaging Right

21. Stop Discounting!

22. Don't Leave Your Job!

1.  On Revenue Sensitivity *

2. On Sales Processes and Methodologies

 

3. Why Your Prospects Won't Talk with You and What to Do About it

 

4.  On Attracting Salespeople When Recruiting

 

5. Transactional Versus Consultative Sales

 

6. Why Forecasts are Always So Inaccurate

 

7. Dinger's Listening Skills *

 

8. Protect Your References

 

9. Why People Should Consider a Career in Sales *

 

10. On Cold Calls

 

 

11. On How Nothing Has Changed in 35 Years.

12. On Not Getting Distracted

 

13. On How to Shorten and Speed Up the Sales Process

14. On Why Sales Training Doesn't Work

15. On The Importance of Momentum in Sales

16. Momentum Part 2: The Difference Between Discipline and Consistency - You'll Need Both!

 

17. Don't Make This Mistake as We Move Forward Into the Recession

18. Sales and the Importance of Having a Quality Conversation

 

19. Why Do Salespeople Chase So Many Unsellable Opportunities?

20. The Importance of Getting Your Messaging Right

21. Stop Discounting

 

22. Don't Leave Your Job!

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By now, surely everyone has written their Super Bowl articles, drawing inspiration from the game, the comeback and the records to make their points.  In my business, it's rare when someone isn't an optimist but I'm a realist and the realist in me kept saying how improbable it would be - even for Tom Brady and the Patriots - to come from that far behind and tie it - never mind win it - against a team as powerful as the Falcons.  But the Falcons' defense was not accustomed to staying on the field for such long stretches and after the Patriots finally tired them out, the Patriots were able to repeatedly drive down the field at will and claim the historic victory.

I read many articles and quotes after the game but the one that works best in this Blog is a quote from 2016 Cy Young Award Winner, Rick Porcello.  He said:

[When I find myself behind in baseball] There are two things you can do. You can think about how insurmountable it is to overcome or you can think about what you can control. That’s getting strike one on the next hitter and going from there.

I felt like there was a comparison there. [Brady's] thought process and why he’s so good is that he’s able to slow those situations down and focus on the present and what’s in front of him. That’s really hard to do, especially in a game of that magnitude.

And of course, we can easily translate that into the language of sales.

Rick Porcello's thoughts about the importance of slowing down in certain situations and focusing on the present apply to the following 10 sales and sales leadership scenarios.  Slow down:

1. When sales calls and meetings aren't going as planned
2. When an important account is making threats about leaving
3. When a large opportunity is slipping away from you
4. When your sales have fallen behind your forecast
5. When you are conducting a discovery call with a new prospect
6. When debriefing a salesperson on a recent sales call or meeting
7. When you just heard what you wanted to hear, but you need to question it
8. When you are qualifying an opportunity
9. When you feel that you must blow up an opportunity
10. When you you feel like it's time to bail out on an opportunity

Noah Goldman, Host of The Enterprise Sales Podcast, interviewed me about all of this today.  Listen here.

Nurturing the ability to slow down on demand is one of the greatest skills you can develop.  It goes hand in hand with patience.  You can't have too much and you can't have too little.  One thing that can help, especially on a discovery call, is to have a large number of questions that you can use if the conversation requires it.  This infographic from Hubspot, that was made with Visme, should help you along!

Over the weekend, I was thinking about sales pipelines and inaccurate forecasts, how companies are always experiencing issues at the top of the funnel, and it inspired the following poetry. It won't win an award for imagination, creativity, rhyming or flow. I'll stick to my day job for this, I surely know.

The pipeline on the left with all the eggs in one basket
Scares me to death - a business, one hope, surely heading for a casket
The one on the right has a healthier look
With more opportunities for deals to be booked.

Once so simple, my pipeline for next quarter
Suspects, prospects, and the sales cycle was shorter
Names and numbers on cards was a must
In a shoe box or a file box, today they collect dust.

The prospects were familiar - referred or introduced
Not like today where leads are seduced
Tire kickers, assistants and all the wrong folks
Wanting ebooks and samples -- it's all a cruel joke.

Back then our forecasts were accurate and true
We reached all the ones who made decisions too
They paid on time, not 90 days late
And cared about partnerships since those were first rate.

We have CRM, email, and marketing tools
And our blogs and our websites make visitors drool
Graphics and videos are now all the rage 
And they clog up the pipeline in the very first stage.

I love all the tools for managing the pipe
Membrain is awesome and will keep prospects ripe
While you're sleeping, Hubspot helps prospects find you 
And their Workflows automate your messages too.

ConnectAndSell gets prospects to the phone for you
7 in an hour - almost too good to be true
Schedule new meetings from calls that are cold
It's today's way of calling - what's new is really old.

With all that has changed, one thing remains clear
You must still do the work or your pipeline goes bare
Get on the phone and talk with some prospects
Or quit sales today and move to customer service.

The End. No it isn't.

Selling - the art and science of getting people who didn't necessarily want what you have, to pay you a premium for it. Before you can sell anything, you must have some people to sell it to! Fill the pipeline today!

Would you like to contribute a verse to this pipeline poem? Give it a try - it can't be any worse than mine!

I love finding cool new apps for my iPad and I'm always looking for the next great weather app.  I recently downloaded eWeather HD and as I poked around, I found something I had never seen before and it has a huge tie-in to sales management, the pipeline, and accurate forecasts!

Appearing right next to the tab for weather alerts, eWeather HD has a tab labeled Quakes.  What the...?  Yes indeed, it logs earthquakes!  Did you know that today, as I write this at 10:18 AM, there have been 6 earthquakes in the past hour?  There was a quake in Eastern Turkey 31 minutes ago that registered 2.1 on the Richter scale, and in the past hour, there were 5 more:

A 2.8 in San Juan, Argentina, a quake in Eastern Turkey that registered 2.3, a 2.4 in the Ionian Sea, a 3.0 in Oklahoma and a 3.1 in Alaska.  And if we go back just 8 hours, there were 14 others, including a 4.3 in Mexico, a 4.5 in Japan, and a 5.0 in Vanuatu.  I don't know about you, but I had no idea that our planet experienced non-stop quakes.  I thought that the ones we heard about on the news accounted for all of the known earthquake activity.

If you run a company, lead a sales force or manage salespeople, you are probably in the dark about salesquakes in much the same way I was in the dark about earthquakes.  The salesquakes registering 5.0 and up on the Kurlan scale - issues that your salespeople come to you with - you know all about those.  But how many of the issues do you hear about when they register below 5.0?

You hear about the deal that's about to close, but then it falls apart.  That's a 6.0.  You hear about the big customer that doesn't renew because they are moving to a competitor.  That's a 7.0.  But do you hear anything at all about opportunities where a salesperson:

• doesn't get to the decision maker and is talking with the wrong people?  A 4.0
• doesn't get a firm budget and proposes something the prospect can't pay for?  A 3.9
• presents or demos to gain interest instead of having a conversation to uncover compelling reasons to buy?  A 4.2
• is competing against an incumbent and is told the only thing that matters is price?  A 3.4
• doesn't identify the competition?  A 3.1
• doesn't tell you that a good opportunity has stalled in an early stage of the sales process?  A 2.9

There are dozens more, but you get the point.  You should know about these salesquakes!

If you have the right CRM solution, and it was configured properly, it would be alerting you to salesquakes in much the same way that eWeather HD alerts me to earthquakes.   If you are using one of the most popular solutions, you probably couldn't identify these quakes even if you were looking for them.

That's one of the things I like so much about Membrain.  There's a ready-to-use version with my Baseline Selling process, Visual Pipeline and methodology built right in that you can get here, or you can contact Membrain for their loaded version with everything you need to run a sales force.

We may not be able to stop earthquakes or even forecast them, but we can put an end to salesquakes and improve the accuracy of our sales forecasts.

Top Sales World and LiveHive have gotten together and published a terrific ebook on getting a jump start to your 2015.  You can download the book here.

You can download the latest issue of Top Sales Magazine here.