I met with the new, yet interim head of sales for the region and business segment.  He was an affable guy. He asked good questions and had a decent understanding of what he was looking for. “Tom” was a humble guy, and admitted we was not long in the position, but wanted to set up who ever was going to follow him as best he could.

The interview and meeting lasted about an hour and went well. Tom revealed he liked my approach, my answers and was generally impressed with my command of sales and sales management. I was the front-runner he told me.

As we were wrapping up, he asked if he could give me a bit of feedback.

Tom said that during one of our pre-interview phone conversations, I referred to him as “brother” and that he felt it inappropriate. He suggested it was too informal and that I consider revising my communication style.

Caught off guard, I accepted his feedback, tried to explain the context of my casual nature and even told him I’d consider different language in the future.

I didn’t get the job.

But, I never forgot that interview. I’m thrilled I didn’t get the job because; I would never have been successful working with that person.  I use “brother” like others use man, buddy, pal, etc.  All of which have permeated our lexicon in both formal and informal settings.

I haven’t changed my style of interaction, which has worked for me for 20 years. Yet, based on his feedback, I almost did.  I’ve made that mistake before, in other areas.  It back –fired, big time! I’m glad I didn’t make that mistake again.

There is absolutely inappropriate behavior and a correct and incorrect way to engage with people. When someone crosses the line, it needs to be called out. But within the realm of appropriateness, everyone has his or her own style and approach.   The key is to be true to that style. It’s what makes you, you!

I’m me. I’ve been successful being me for quite sometime. Nope!  It’s not for everyone and I’m OK with that.  However, changing into someone I’m not, so everyone doesn’t, “not like” me is stupid.

Authenticity builds trust. When we are our authentic self, we perform better because we’re not acting. Your customers and prospects will sense your authenticity and reward you for it.  People can smell the posers and the fakers. Don’t be a poser.   Don’t let anyone tell you to be someone you aren’t. Odds are they aren’t being themselves.  Don’t’ be like them.

Be yourself, your customers will sense it and that is about as appropriate as you can get.

When we rush to get something done because we don’t have enough time, we risk making things worse. Convincing ourselves that getting it done quickly is more important than doing it right is a shell game we play with ourselves. We play the game to give us more time. It allows us to do things at the last minute.  We convince ourselves that we can get it done, but we almost never do.

If you don’t have time to do it right, you don’t have time to do it over.

Save yourself and everyone else a lot of hassle , slow down and do it right or just don’t do it at all.

What the caption always lacks is what it inspired in them and what action it inspired them to take. The sender almost never took any action. Without action, inspiration can’t exit.

Inspiration requires action. There is no inspiration without action. Inspiration is the act of motivating us to do something. If we call something inspirational and don’t act, it’s not inspirational. It could be heart warming. It could be emotional. It could be uplifting. But it’s not inspirational.

When we are inspired, we act.

If we don’t act, we we’re not inspired.

The next time you see a video or read a story that is emotional, uplifting, or heart warming, rather than posting it to Facebook or emailing it to friends saying it’s inspirational, make it inspirational and take action. Then email it, put it on Facebook or Twitter  and tell everyone what action you took. It’s much more powerful that way!

Inspiration is action, not talk!

During one particular week in the season, like a shit head, I skipped school. I got caught and was suspended for that Saturday’s football game.  I had to stand on the sidelines, in my game jersey, no pads and watch. It sucked.  It was hard. We lost the game.

The next day, I walked down to my grandfathers house. As usual, he was reading the Sunday Paper. I walked in and started some small talk. He just looked at me and asked; “What happened?”

Apparently, my absence on the field was a bigger deal than I thought. The paper made a point to report I did not play due to a suspension.

I asked my grandfather what he was talking about, knowing clear well what he was asking me.

He looked at me and asked again. “What happened?”

Just as I was about to explain what happened, my grandfather blurted out; “Wait! Don’t tell me. I know. It was your coaches fault!”

I looked at him puzzled and wondered to myself. What is he talking about?

He then said, “Wait, I know! It was your teachers fault!”  He paused and then said, “No, it was your buddy’s fault!” he took a quick breath and quickly said; “It was the schools fault.” He then paused again.  He looked at me for just a brief second, but not long enough for me to say anything and said; “Don’t tell me! I’ll get it!  Because, I know it wasn’t your fault!”

I’ll never, ever, ever forget that day.

So, when you don’t make quota. When you lose the big deal, when you miss the RFP deadline, when you don’t make enough cold calls, when you don’t make Presidents Club, when you lose your best client, when the demo doesn’t go well, when your presentation bombs, don’t worry about it. I know! — It’s not your fault!

It has never been more important for sales people to be seen as experts. Sales has never been more reliant on reach and personal brand. Blogging enables all of this. Not blogging is selling in anonymity and selling in anonymity will put sales people behind the eight ball.

Why blog?

It establishes you as a subject matter expert: Blogging allows you to express your understanding of selling, your industry, your products, your competition and more. Blogging creates a place where you can showcase your knowledge and experience. Knowledge and understanding have never been more important in the selling process. Why wait to let people know what you know. Start telling them now.

It creates reach: Blogging allows you to create an audience, it gives you followers and a community. Blogging regularly brings people to you; people who are interested in learning more about the industries you write about, the products you sell, the processes they use and more.  Blogging gives you access to the audience you are selling to. Cold calling is NOT dead, but relying on it is a bad move. The best sales people will learn how to develop an audience of potential customers that will compliment their traditional lead generation efforts. Reach will be the holy grail of selling in 2012 and beyond.

It will accelerate your career: Imagine having 100′s of poignant, engaging posts that illustrate your understanding of your industry, your approach to selling, your knowledge of products and the competition. A blog provides a vivid picture of you and your approach to your job a resume simply can’t provide. Blogging accelerates your career by combining reach, with your knowledge to elevate your status among other non blogging sales people.

What would you rather give a recruiter, an ordinary resume or your resume and a link to your blog with 100′s of examples or your work?

It expands your knowledge: Not only does blogging showcase your knowledge and understanding it expands it. Committing to blogging forces you to be cognoscente of what is going on around you. It forces you to look critically at what you do and how you do it. It forces you to take account of things you would normally miss. It causes you to evaluate your environment. Doing these things provides inspiration for blog posts. Blogging forces you to become more conscience and aware of what you do and why you do it and that makes you better.

It creates differentiation: Differentiation is critical in everything, including sales. Blogging allows you to create a unique brand around you and your selling approach. It creates a personal brand associated with you and what makes you good. It let’s people know what makes you different and why.  Differentiation in people is just as valuable as differentiation of product. Start differentiating now.

It will get you more business: Creating a blog will increase sales. You will make more money.  No, it won’t happen in the first quarter, and it probably won’t happen in the second quarter. I wouldn’t expect it to happen in the 3rd quarter, but it could. However, by the 4th quarter of regular blogging (3-4 days a week) and into 2013 you will start to see the fruits of your labor. You’ll have more leads, you will have more job opportunities, you will have better rapport with your customers and you will wonder why you didn’t start blogging earlier.

Blogging is a long term investment that will pay off big time! How we go about selling is changing. Knowing what is changing and capitalizing on is the key. Of all the things you can do in 2012 to respond to the change is start to blog.

If you start a blog because of this post, let me know. Send me the link and I will post about it on this blog. Yup, I think it’s that important and want to help you get a jump on it.

The best thing a sales person can do in 2012 is start a blog.  Go on, what are you waiting for.

We can avoid telling ourselves we messed up. We can avoid saying, “I could have tried harder.” We can never admit it wasn’t our bosses fault. We can avoid acknowledging we are short on patience and have been hard on the kids. We can tell ourselves we haven’t made the cold calls we need to because we are too busy, and not because we don’t like doing it. We can avoid admitting we didn’t do the research we should have done, or that we spent the weekend playing rather than preparing for the biggest presentation of the year.

We can tell ourselves a lot of things. But what we should be telling ourselves is the truth.

We need to be honest with ourselves. The minute we are honest with ourselves, EVERYTHING else magically falls into place.

It doesn’t matter what we tell ourselves, as long as it’s the truth.  The worse lie, is the one we tell ourselves.

Christine Cacioppo over at Union Square Ventures wrote a great post yesterday called, What Comes Next?.  Christine is an analyst at USV and has seen over 160 start-up’s this year. She’s attended just about every tech start up incubator there is. Knowing this, I was very interested in her thoughts. Her post title was perfect. If anyone is going to know what’s coming next it’s going to be her. If we assume that start-ups are working on the next big “thing” or in the next big “space”, then Christine is right in the thick of it.

Christine noticed two specific trends; Software is developing its own component industry and work is shifting toward a peer-to-peer model. It’s the second one that got my attention and the one we all need to be paying attention to.  The future of our careers depends on it. Especially if you are younger than 40.

This excerpt says it all:

Workers who can’t differentiate themselves using their reputation will be commoditized.

Christine is absolutely right.

I started this blog 3 years ago.  I recognized, as an executive, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to move up the career ladder. Performance was no longer the sole determinant behind career growth. As I moved up the career ladder things such as politics, relationships, experience, brand, ability to play the game, etc. all played an increasing role in executive career advancement. To address these changes and increase my ability to move up the executive ranks I started to blog. My thought was to document my knowledge, my approaches, my ideas and by doing so I would create more opportunities for advancement.  It worked to a degree, but not exactly as expected. What I didn’t expect is what makes my blogging journey interesting and what makes Christines observations so germain.

Blogging increased my exposure. Blogging improved my reputation and it expanded my network.  However, blogging didn’t move me up the corporate ladder. It created ME as a corporation.

Companies didn’t start asking me to come work for them. Recruiters weren’t calling me to be some companies new EVP of Sales or Chief Sales Officer. Instead, companies started calling me to help them fix their organizations. They didn’t want me as an employee.  They wanted me to work with them, not for them. They wanted my knowledge and wisdom. They wanted me to help their sales executives. This outcome of blogging was not expected.

Here is the money quote from Christine’s post that supports what I experienced:

Between identified, liberated individuals and the nameless, faceless drones of Mechanical Turk lies identity: does it matter who performs the task at hand? If the worker’s background, skills, or experience matter, there’s likely to be higher variance in demand for a particular person’s services, and free agents will be sought after and chosen by reputation on services built for those purposes. Less-skilled people are likely better suited for tasks for which identity doesn’t matter, and other marketplaces that don’t include a concept of reputation will provide access to a global pool of workers.

This is spot on and is happening now.  Identity and reputation matter when the service can not be boxed or is not repeatable.  When a service varies based on who is performing it, and is impacted by the knowledge, experience, understanding and the creativity of that individual, reputation and identity become paramount. If companies can get the knowledge, experience, and information they need to achieve their goals without creating more employees, they will. Employees were necessary when information didn’t flow well.

One reason to create firms is the coordination and signaling problems of situations with imperfect information and transaction costs. As technology increases information flows and decreases transaction costs, individuals can leave their old employers and strike out on their own. Their livelihoods will still depend on providing valuable services in exchange for fees, but they’ll do so as freelancers – and on their own, they’ll capture more of the value generated by their work.

Information is flowing like the Colorado River and is only increasing. Transaction costs are decreasing. Firms/companies can perform and compete with fewer “employees” therefore reducing costs and increasing margins. At the very same time, those performing the service, the freelancers, will capture more value for their efforts.

What does all this mean?  It means reputation and identity matter and are going to matter even more in the future. It means jobs, once consider corporate ,will be outsourced or freelanced. It means measuring job experience and resumes to identify a workers value are diminishing and will eventually disappear. It means reputation will be a huge determinant in success or failure. It means those who are proactive and deliberate in managing their reputation their brand, and their service will out perform those who are not.

To put a fine point on this last paragraph. Sales is NOT and will NOT be the nameless and faceless. Identity and reputation will matter in sales.

I started this blog to move up the corporate ladder.  Instead, I’ve built a reputation. The reputation is giving me a lot more than I expected. The one thing I can say that it hasn’t given me is another rung on what appears to he a very wobbly corporate ladder.

Artisans didn’t embrace mass production. They didn’t do things just like everyone else.  Artisans were craftsman.  They differentiated themselves by being better than other artisans. To differentiate, Artisans created their own style.  They pioneered new and different approaches. They personalized their craft. Artisan’s used their unique style and approach to elevate them from their competition and establish their brand. Their work defined them and to this day artisans can be identified simply by looking at their work.

Today we have workers. Workers don’t have a craft.  They have a job. Workers don’t have a journey to become a master. Workers don’t master anything. Workers just do. Workers meet the “minimal expected deliverable” or MED.   Workers focus on the work. They focus on the job, not the result. Workers measure themselves in how long they’ve worked or in how hard they worked, not in what they delivered.  Workers differentiate themselves by working harder, not better.  Workers show up, punch a clock, put in the time and deliver exactly what is asked of them.

The world is filled with workers.  It’s easy being a worker. Counting hours doesn’t require creativity. It doesn’t require extensive knowledge. Counting hours just requires you show up.

The world needs artisans. It’s not easy being an artisan. Artisans expand their craft. Artisans have extensive knowledge of their craft, the industry and the people and companies they affect. Artisans don’t count hours. They measure impact. They focus on detail. Artisans don’t just show up, they create.

Are you an artisan or a worker?  It’s easy to know, just not so easy to admit.  Be and artisan, it’s the better choice.

Image via Wikipedia

My cousin lives in Vail and goes to Battle Mountain H.S.  The other night Lindsey Vonn visited her school to give a talk.  At the end of the talk, my cousins friend Parker got the courage to ask Lindsey to homecoming . . . and she said yes.

Today, the story is all over the place.  It’s been picked up by the NY Times, Huffington Post, Yahoo Sports and more. Run a search for “Lindsey Vonn and homecoming” and you’ll get 3 million results. I’m sure they aren’t all about her going to homecoming with a 15 year old H.S. boy, but the first 5 pages are.

Lindsey is an a Olympic Gold Medalist Skier.  She is a repeat World Cup Champion. She is one of the winningest female skiers in history, but she doesn’t make her money from skiing. Lindsey, like most athletes makes her money through sponsorships.  The key to sponsorships is public perception. The more the public likes you, the more value you have to sponsors.  And, Lindsey gets this.

I’ve never met Lindsey personally, but I have been to events where she was the host. She’s signed my daughters helmets and posters. Lindsey is a personable, engaging, friendly celebrity and it’s working for her. By agreeing to go to homecoming with Parker, Lindsey’s name is all over the news.  It’s phenomenal publicity. I don’t think Lindsey was thinking about publicity when she said yes, but I do think Lindsey knows being nice, going the extra mile and putting your fans first pays.

With all the money celebrities and companies pay these days to get exposure, they all could learn a lesson from Lindsey.  Stop trying so hard and just be real.

One other thing.  Recruiters, put Parker McDonald on your recruiting list.  Any kid who has the gumption and skills to get one of the greatest skiers in the world to go with him to the homecoming dance, is a talent.

Way to go Parker.  I can’t wait to see the pictures!

Related articles

• Lindsay Vonn accepts homecoming dance invite (offthebench.nbcsports.com)
• Coolest Story About an Olympian and a 15-year Old Without a Date (bonjupatten.wordpress.com)

Rico Suave: 

These tools use physical appearance, dress and finely crafted vocabulary to gain credibility. They are smooth, with a keen sense of what their prey is thinking. They leverage a strong, appealing personality to put their victims at ease.  They are not pushy as they know being pushy can scare their prey. Instead they engage their target with platitudes, information and compliments. Rico knows his or her products and the competition. They have massive amounts of information stored in their head and they use what they need to steer their prey in their direction. They don’t outright lie, but they will be quick to stretch the truth. Rico makes sales, has a huge network, and “knows” everybody. Rico is popular with the new people or on a superficial level. But upon deeper inspection you’ll find a trail of cheated, angry people behind him. Rico Suave is smooth, he or she looks for a crack in the buyer and moves in for the kill.  After the sale is gone, he is gone, before you realize you bought something you didn’t need.

The Bully

The bully is relentless. The won’t take no for an answer. He or she will beat you to a pulp until you buy. The bully is oblivious to the subtleties of sales. Bully’s don’t care about buying signals or body language. They are always on full speed ahead. Bully’s aren’t afraid to make you feel dumb for your decisions. They won’t hesitate to come right out and tell you if they think you are making a mistake. Bully’s talk loud. They are crass, to the point and don’t like small talk.  The bully measures him or herself on the number of closes. They don’t have time to be nice, or let the sale drag on. In their mind you are buying or you are in their way. The bully will go over your head and tell your boss you are incompetent if it will get the sale. Like Rico Suave, the bully is gone after the sale. The don’t have time to hold hands or see how your doing.  They have someone else they need to bully.

The Mooch:

The mooch is the loser who hoards as many companies in the CRM as possible, until a another rep uncovers an opportunity they then claim the account. The mooch works hard at doing nothing and tries to take credit for everything. They always try to look busy. They are always talking to the sales manager or trying to get on the V.P.’s calendar to talk about this “hot” prospect they are working. The Mooch talks more than he or she delivers. They are always at lunch “with clients” or on the golf course, but rarely if ever exceed quota. The mooch is never the number one producer. They are always that big deal away from blowing it up. The mooch is always walking around the office spreading gossip, stealing ideas and being a general pain in the ass. The mooch talks a good game, but is basically useless.

The Randy Moss, Manny Ramirez, or Terrell Owens. 

This sales peson is a pretty good sales person. They are often a top producer, consistently exceeding quota. They have excellent customer relationships. They know the product inside and out. The Randy Moss sales person is a selling machine. They will be the first in the office and the last out. The Randy Moss, Manny Ramirez or Terrell Owens are damn good sales people, they are just a jerks. The don’t have time for anyone but themselves. They don’t spend time with the rest of the team. They can’t be relied on to knowledge share. They don’t follow the rules and think it’s OK, because of their numbers. They rarely update the CRM. The Randy Moss, Manny Ramirez or Terrell Owens are difficult to fire. Their numbers are always the best and they are brilliant at establishing internal relationships at the highest levels. The CEO, COO, EVP’s embrace their success and highlight them as the poster child of sales success, while the sales manager and sales team vomit in their mouth at the thought of having to work with them. The Randy Moss, Manny Ramirez or Terrell Owens make their numbers but they are a cancer to the sales team.

The Debbie Downer

The Debbie Downer is always complaining. He or she finds fault or a problem with everything. They are loaded to the gills with reasons and excuses why they can’t sell. The price is too high. The product doesn’t have the features the customer wants. The market is changing. The commission plan is wrong. The company doesn’t support sales. There isn’t enough selling time. Marketing doesn’t provide enough quality leads. Sales management doesn’t understand the selling environment. Debbie Downer has a problem with everything. He or she builds trust with customers by sharing the companies dirty laundry. Debbie Downer will give customers a killer deal so the customer will like and trust him or her. Debbie downer is rarely at quota. He or she bounces from sales job to sales job starting off strong then settling into an environment where he or she stops producing and starts blaming everything around them.  Debbie downers bring entire teams down by making little things big and infecting the team with a negative outlook.

Dealing with these sales “tools” is another post. So for now just don’t be a “tool,” and for sure don’t hire a “tool.”

Are there any “tools” I missed?