Archive for March, 2010

To achieve Fast Biz Growth two things are required. A well defined plan and the other is a great sales team. Out of all the blogs and experts I follow there are two that I put at the top of my list. Verne Harnish, Author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” and Dave Kurlan author of “Baseline Selling” and the leading sales force development expert. Below is a recent blog from Dave Kurlan on optimism.

Mike Brenhaug
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I’m reading Sarah Miller Caldicott’s book, Innovate Like Edison.

There are some noteworthy quotes which, although written in the context of innovation, apply equally, if not even more to selling and sales management.

“Psychologist Karen Horney (1885-1952) undertook groundbreaking work on optimism early in the twentieth century. She discovered that most people actually succeed when they decide, with full commitment, to accomplish something. Most of what people label as ‘failure’ according to her research, is a function of their doubts acting as traitors, causing them to withhold full commitment and give up too soon.”

Ain’t that the truth! I couldn’t have said that better…here’s another.

“As Edison phrased it, ‘Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged.’ He adds, ‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.’”

Ditto for that quote. One more…

“Dr. Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, and author of Learned Optimism, has researched optimism for more than thirty years. His work offers further confirmation of the validity of Edison’s approach. According to Seligman, optimists get better results than pessimists in most areas of life. His research shows that optimists perform better at school, in relationships, on the athletic field, and at work….And optimists make significantly more money. All this is true despite the fact that pessimists are more skilled, according to Sligman, in their ability to analyze current problems accurately. For the pessimist, the optimist is someone who simply doesn’t yet see the facts as they are. But despite the tendency to view the world through rose-colored glasses, numerous long-term studies confirm that better results emerge when we err on the side of optimism.”

I’m not an optimist or a pessimist. I tend to be a be a realist. Relating the aforementioned quotes to selling, I believe that optimists find it difficult to challenge people. I can easily slide over to the pessimistic side when necessary, like when it’s time to debrief a salesperson on a recent call. It’s difficult to punch holes or question a salesperson’s account of a call if you are an optimist. Optimists often become overexcited and set unrealistic expectations about the likely outcome of an opportunity. I believe you must be able to slide back and forth between optimism and pessimism. Get yourself motivated and excited, be realistic about what’s happening, and challenge people when what you hear doesn’t sound right. What are your thoughts?

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 04:50 AM

Weekly insights from Verne Harnish, founder of Gazelle’s International and author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits”. As a Gazelle’s coach I receive these weekly insights from Verne and find them extremely valuable.

Mike Brenhaug

Verne’s Weekly Insights -

HEADLINES:
Correction to Last Insight — Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million, not $256! And Tony is also giving away one signed advanced copy per day from now until the book is launched on June 7th. Interested readers can sign up at www.deliveringhappinessbook.com.

Capitol Lighting Quarterly Theme Video — it’s that time of the year to be planning for your next quarterly theme (April 1 start for most companies). What are your top 3 - 5 priorities for the quarter and how are you going to communicate them? Capitol Lighting, with 9 retail lighting stores in New Jersey and Florida, produced a 3 minute video to highlight their “A New Dawn” theme, core values, and five priorities.

Navigating Choppy Waters — notes Ken Lebersfeld, co-owner of this 4th generation business with his brother and two cousins, “we have been seriously impacted by the housing downturn and have navigated our way through some pretty choppy waters. We have made more changes in the last 10 months then in the prior 10 years.” This is their first quarterly theme, unveiling the results of their One-Page Strategic Plan.

Keller Sports GbR Sets 90-Day Goals — another newbie to Rockefeller Habits, Jakob Keller, Managing Partner of Munich-based Keller Sports, noted “after having heard you in Munich (Feb 9), we’ve implemented the first two ‘tools” in our company. First we set up a meeting plan including daily, weekly, and monthly meetings. Second, we set up 90-day goals.” Results since launching March 1:
1. We have had about 250 daily meetings since we started and it has only happened twice that someone showed up a couple of minutes late as they are eager to be able to let me know what’s up and to share their “where I am stuck — question.”
2. A couple of our employees told us that they wanted to use their holidays, for the days they hadn’t been to work due to illness, so they could keep on fighting for the 90 day goals.
3. Employees simply say that they feel much better with the new structures and they now know what they work for specifically.
Get More DONE — continues Jakob “In terms of performance measurements it might be a little too early as we started on March 1st, but until now I can say that we get more DONE instead of trying to get done many things at the same time — the feeling of getting something done is something each employee needs as a reward…and the employees are happier and much more motivated than they had been before.”

Learn Fast — Act Fast — concludes Jakob “next we are going to implement a ‘distinct customer feedback’ process for every employee of the company (including myself). I am positive this is going to give us great value.”

Tom Peters Interview — and as a follow-up to my review of Tom’s new book The Little Big Things, John Cousineau, President of sales-productivity software company Amacus pointed me to David Meerman Scott’s 12 minute interview of Tom about the new book. Particularly watch the one minute segment starting at 3:25 (David provides the time coded segments) where he delineates what has and hasn’t changed in business the last 30 years.

Interesting Mind-Stretching Stuff — one of Tom’s 163 ideas is to continue to stretch your mind with interesting stuff, so I’m going to add a section to my weekly insights that hopefully does just that for you. My first one is about a “Cheap Portable Wound Healing Device” an MIT grad student developed and is testing in Haiti.