Tim Rooney

When we look at our “to do” list – it’s sometimes embarrassing to see how few of the good intentions have been executed, or even started. This often leads to a lot of guilt even a feeling that you’re a “slacker”. So our intentions were good - but we failed to execute! How so?

As an executive there’s probably a big gap between how you THINK you spend your time and how you ACTUALLY do. If I asked you the question – “Do you know how you spend your time at work ?” – most executives would respond in the affirmative. Wrong! – most executives have no idea of how they spend their time. What they tell you they do and what they actually do , are a mile apart.

I don’t regard myself as particularly brave, but what I am struck by, is the impact that just 5 lousy seconds of courage can have on one’s life for the better.

The essence of Business Strategy is all about differentiation. In simple English, our business strategy should answer the question “so what makes you different from your competition?”

Lets be frank – it’s not possible to always keep motivated – and as that famous poster with the steam engine collapsing off the bridge says – “Shit happens!” Buddha perhaps said it more eloquently when he said – “Life is a Problem” and we all know – “you have to taste the sour to appreciate the sweet”.

“The Death of the Salesman – has been greatly exaggerated”, this is what Economist blog Schumpeter said in the Oct 14, 2011 issue. The blog pointed-out that contrary to all the negative predictions that the dot.com boom would make sales people obsolete – this has simply not been the case. It points out, that Management guru Peter Drucker - barely wrote anything about selling in fact he said that “the aim of marketing was to make selling superfluous”!

Here’s a quick list of 6 things that might suggest you should not invest in sales training...

Selling is one of the hardest professions out there and the life of a salesman is full of disappointments. 90 % rejection is probably the norm when looking to close new business. Studies show that the pain of rejection when looking at the brain is equal in intensity to physical pain. So the question you may want to ask yourself is - should you welcome adversity and are the lessons to be learned from adversity?

Over the last 10 years, I have trained and coached many hundreds of sales people – here are some of the surprising things I’ve learned:

Carrying on from my post of last week, I have learned a lot of things throughout my years as a trainer. As technology advanced along, these surprises continued.