Are You Smarter Than A Sales Manager?

You’re the sales manager for the month.  Your team is doing everything they can to increase their sales but nothing seems to work.  Your salespeople work hard and deserve success.  You’re at a loss for ideas too.  The group tells you at your weekly meeting that finding new customers doesn’t work.  Would you:

1. Shrug your shoulders and say, “Ok, you’re right” and end the meeting?
2. Threaten to fire them if they don’t meet their quotas?
3. Bring in an expert who’s been there before to share his experiences?

If your answer is (c), give me 142 minutes and I’ll give you over 300 ideas to make better calls to find new customers and increase your sales.  You’ll learn what it’s taken me 34 years to learn from people like the father of medicine Hippocrates, psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, hypnotist and psychiatrist Dr. Milton Erickson, body language expert Allan Pease, Arizona State marketing and psychology Professor Robert Cialdini, Harvard psychologist and Professor Dr. Nalini Ambady, and personality guru Tony Allessandra.  Plus the secrets that thousands of top salespeople from across the nation have shared with me that have made them leaders in their industries.

Go to Sales Webinars on Demand and let me help you reach your goals starting today.  Train your entire sales team for only $75.  And when you sign up for all three webinars before November 15, I’ll give you my book Cold Calling for Cowards: How to Turn the Fear of Rejection into Opportunities, Sales, and Money FREE!  (A $21.95 value.)

Newsletter Contents

• Live In Fear
• Tongue Twisters
• Quick Quirky Quotes
• Free Stuff!

Live In Fear
Boo!
by Jerry Hocutt

“You know me Dave.  I live every moment in fear.  I’m afraid of everything,” deadpanned director/producer and funny guy Barry Sonnenfeld (Pushing Daisies, Men in Black, Get Shorty) to David Letterman. 

“I know,” Letterman grinned, “everything scares you.”

“Yeah, but on my best days I cling to the wreckage,” Sonnenfeld sighed.

Letterman and his audience roared.  Why is that funny?  Could it be because we saw our reflections in the mirror?

But what else makes it funny?  Because we can laugh at our fears.  And laughter is the best medicine.  The predicaments we get ourselves into can be surmounted with laughter.  Human beings are the only animals on the planet that can laugh. 

John Elway is remembered for “The Drive”: the 1987, 98-yard come from behind touchdown march to tie the Cleveland Browns in the AFC championship game with only 37 ticks left on the clock.

Before stepping into the huddle in his own end zone to call the first play of the Drive, Elway surveyed the 98-yards of turf standing between the Broncos and their destiny, looked at the remaining time on the clock and then told his teammates, “Okay men, we’ve got ’em where we want ’em.”  The tension in the huddle melted.  Elway led the offense into the end zone to tie the game and then took them into overtime to win it and go on to the Super Bowl.

Laughter forges bonds

You’ll do almost anything for someone who can make you laugh.  Laughter knocks down barriers.  Dissolves inhibitions.  What makes something funny is weird because somehow it makes strange connections in the brain.  (Maybe this is why laughter is a good medicine?)  It seems like the minute you think of something funny it jumps out of your mouth without giving you a chance to think twice about it.

Norman Cousins detailed in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, how he lived years after doctors had diagnosed him with a fatal disease that would take him quickly.  His secret for survival?  Humor.  He would watch every movie, television show, and read as many articles as he could that would make him laugh.  "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported.

People pay to have others make them laugh.  Mark Twain knew it.  Jerry Seinfeld knows it.  SNL knows it.  Laughter connects people, events, and memories whether they’re at parties, comedy clubs, or even wakes.  Laughter comes in all sizes, shapes, and ages.

That’s the beauty of children.  Watching them, playing with them, and laughing with them makes the world easier to take.  They know it’s okay to poke and prod, imagine and question.  Nothing is sacred.  There’s nothing that can’t be fixed.  Everything is possible.  Life is exciting.  They’ll have time to get serious when they get older.  They will work at jobs they’ll hate.  Attend meetings that will bore them.  But why spoil the fun and tell them.  That’s tomorrow.  Today is for fun and wonder and exploring.

Find someone to laugh with today.  Go see a funny movie.  Play with your kids.  Tomorrow will be here soon enough.  But for today lighten up. 

Rx for fear: Laughter – take with a smile.

She is a thistle-sifter. She has a sieve of unsifted thistles and a sieve of sifted thistles and the sieve of unsifted thistles she sifts into the sieve of sifted thistles because she is a thistle-sifter.

Betty bought some butter,
but the butter Betty bought was bitter, so Betty bought some better butter, and the better butter Betty bought was better than the bitter butter Betty bought before!

Five fat friars frying flat fish.

Humor in Truth
“Our guest of honor is living proof that having a goal, a dream, and struggling hard to attain it don’t always work.” – Unknown

His Caddy Gave Him a GPS
“He likes to be alone in the woods, go places where few have gone before and face seemingly impossible challenges.  Unfortunately, he does all this while golfing.” – Unknown

Hey...That’s My Family Tree You’re Talking About
“His family album indicates that his ancestors went west in a covered wagon.  And when I saw the pictures of them, I realized why the wagon was covered.” – Unknown

Rodney?  Is that you?
“As a kid he was so ugly that they put him in a corner and fed him with a slingshot.” – Unknown