We’ve done a lot of reading this year, and while we’ve gotten something out of everything we’ve read, we have a few favorites we’d especially like to share with you. If you’re interested in seeing our full lists with some additional commentary, check out our reading lists on each of our LinkedIn profiles (Kevin on LinkedIn, Wendy on LinkedIn).

Also there are a few books that we’ve talked about in previous posts (here, here, and here), so we didn’t feel there was a need to include those again.

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

– by Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson

Kevin’s biggest takeaway – (First of all, if you only read one book off of my list, make it this one.)  The greatest need of your prospect/client is for you to help them discover what it is that they truly need.

Wendy’s biggest takeaway – As a natural part of the business evolution cycle, consumer needs and wants change over time and so do the ways that people want to buy. In order to remain a relevant business, selling styles must evolve as well.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

– by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Kevin’s biggest takeaway – Effective communication of ideas is critical.  Unfortunately, most of those who are trying to communicate an idea have a “curse of knowledge”.  It is the difference between their level of understanding of an issue compared to that of their audience that impedes effective communication.  The book offers a great way to assess the likely effectiveness of any message you want to send.

Wendy’s biggest takeaway – Communication is the foundation of all relationships, and the right kind of communication for effectively initiating changes in thinking & behavior is imperative. It can be quite simple if you think about communication like the Heath brothers do – from the perspective of the uninformed recipient trying to digest your information for the first time.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

– by Daniel H. Pink

Kevin’s biggest takeaway – Many current management practices are running contrary to their intended purpose. The more businesses try to externally motivate and push goals upon their staff without tying it to individual needs, the lesser the results. To see the greatest results, we need to, instead, address the main drivers of intrinsic motivation - autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Wendy’s biggest takeaway – Businesses need to catch up with the way people think and evolve their management style from managing people to leading people. Drive power in the business by tapping into the natural abilities and resources of your team rather than pushing them to merely meet the minimum job requirements.

The Other Side of Innovation

– by Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble

Kevin’s biggest takeaway - New ideas are easy to come by, but it’s how you address the challenges, which result from the idea, that determine success.  It is the execution that is more difficult and holds the hidden dangers.  Because the execution is humdrum, behind the scenes, and involves hard work, it is all too often an afterthought that gets overlooked.

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels

– by Michael Watkins

Kevin’s biggest takeaway – 10 Critical Strategies: 1. Promote yourself  2. Accelerate your learning  3. Match strategy to situation  4. Secure early wins  5. Negotiate success  6. Achieve alignment  7. Build your team  8. Create coalitions  9. Keep your balance  10. Expedite everyone

RePositioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis

– by Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin

Kevin’s biggest take way – Powerful ideas always clash with someone’s personal agenda.  This ensures an early demise for any concept that has to work its way up the organization for final approval.  No matter how good they are, ideas will never win on their own merit.  If you don’t have the right people in the room, very little change will happen.

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

– by Howard Schultz

Wendy’s biggest takeaway – The love that owners have for their businesses and the struggles they face are universal regardless of size or degree of success. Just because you’ve been in business a long time doesn’t mean you should change the passionate outlay you put into the business. Getting comfortable is one of the most dangerous risks a company can face.

Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself

– by William C. Taylor

Wendy’s biggest takeaway – Any business can completely transform itself and WOW its customers. Yes, even mature, commoditized industries can change and offer new ways of doing business. Innovative ideas, a will to succeed, a strong leader leading the vision, and a dedicated group to make it happen can yield incredible results. The many case studies in here are just inspiring!

@kevintrokey

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As a sales leader in your organization, one of the most critical functions you perform is to help young producers learn and refine their sales skills.  And, yes, selling is a skill, not a personality trait. 

Sure, there is a lot to be said for how personality influences a person’s ability to sell, but personality alone is just a start.  It’s like most other things - you may be born with the potential, but to realize that potential takes a lot of hard work and practice. 

So, as that sales leader, it’s critical for you to understand how to help your team realize their potential and become the most effective salesperson their potential allows.

There are four critical steps.

Tell

An effective sales process is one that can be replicated.  I don’t mean that it is cookie cutter, but it does need to be one in which there are clearly identified steps.  Take the time to explain:

• each step in detail,
• what it is meant to accomplish,
• and (most importantly) WHY it is necessary.

(As you think about your process, if you don’t have clearly defined steps in the process, I encourage you to rethink how you have your people selling.)

Show

As the teacher in this process, it is critical for you to demonstrate for your student how to execute the sales process.  This is the first step in moving beyond theory and putting the process into practice.  And, since no two sales situations are the same, it is important that you show them the process in various settings.   Show them in the safe environment of the office and then show them how it works in front of a prospect.

Watch

Now it’s their turn.  You watching them practice is the only way you will be able to offer them the constructive criticism that is necessary for them to get it right.  It is important that they are allowed the time to build their confidence.  Watch them execute in the safety of the office, but also go along to watch them perform in front of a real prospect.  Not only will it allow for that constructive criticism afterwards, they will be more confident for having you along.

Allow

Follow the first three steps and you will know for sure when they are ready to go out and perform on their own.  However, to truly stay sharp, you need to take them back to the previous steps from time to time. Going through this process with experienced producers offers a few important opportunities:

• make sure that bad habits don’t slip in
• start introducing additional sales skills
• continue refining them into more and more effective salespeople

As you read this, I hope that it all seems obvious.  All too often the middle two steps are skipped because we think of an ability to sell as more of a personality trait than a skill set.  Therefore, we simply tell them what to do, and then send them out in the field to perform.

To be able to follow this formula, two things have to happen.

1. You have to develop a well-defined and repeatable sales process.
2. As the sales leader, you have to develop the skill yourself to effectively execute the middle two steps.

There’s an old saying that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.  If you’re skipping the two middle steps, this likely describes you.  Commit to all four steps and you become one of the most valuable resources in your organization.

Photo by wooleywonderworks.

@kevintrokey

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One of the most difficult hires for any agency to make is to hire a new producer that will produce on par with your most successful producers.  While I’m not suggesting giving up on that effort, I would encourage to make sure you are reviewing your current production team and constantly rehiring the successful producers you already have.

Huh?!  -  Well, not necessarily in the literal sense.

Time to prospect

Think of your most successful producer.  When she first came on board all she had was time.  Time to prospect, time to make sales presentations, time to close deals.  Wasn’t that an exciting time for everyone?!  Well, with that success has come other demands on her time.  Now she is spending more and more time taking care of that book of business she has built and less and less time on prospecting, presentations, and closings.  It is quite likely that she is now spending no more than 10% to 20% of her time on sales activities.

Obviously the agency needs to keep growing, so you go looking for someone else just like her.  Someone who can prospect, present, and close on par with what she was doing a few years ago.  The problem is, those people are hard to find.  Success at that level is hard to replicate.  So instead of hiring her “sales replacement”, hire her “service replacement”.

After all, it is the service issues that are taking time away from her ability to keep prospecting, presenting, and closing.

Time to rehire

Take inventory of all of the demands on her time.  Wherever you find demands that don’t have to do with prospecting, presenting, and closing (okay, throw in some renewal responsibilities, but only at a strategic, relationship level) package them together to create a job description for the person you want to hire.

This will still be a very high level hire, probably even a relatively expensive one.  However, it is one that is much easier to do with predictable success and will free up a proven talent to go out and (you got it) prospect, present, and close deals.  What she can do if you re-hire the 80% - 90% of her time that has been taken up with non-sales issues (even if you can only recapture 50% of that time) will be a huge return on the investment of “rehiring”!

Photo by Ben Tesch.

@kevintrokey

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When you get right down to it, especially in a solutions/service industry, what you are selling is confidence.  You have to give your prospect the confidence that what you will deliver will improve their situation.

That’s not an easy task.  Not because their current situation is so ideal, but because they can’t hold and experience what you are selling before they commit.  Therefore, you have to very directly address the specific issues that will build that confidence.

Client Experiences – Be able to share success stories of other clients who were in a similar situation.  I’m not talking about the generic, testimonial letters (although these are important to), but rather customers who were struggling in the same manner as the prospect, and whose situation was improved because of your solution. 

If they are struggling with effectively communicating to their employees, share a story of a current client who had a similar communication struggle and become very effective because of working with you.

It Takes A Team – As producers, we often think that telling the prospect, “I’m your guy/gal.  Whenever you need ANYTHING, you call me, and I’ll take care of it,” will be reassuring.  Guess what?  Your prospect is going to be much more confident knowing that there is an entire team to take care of them rather than one individual whose job it is to apparently know everything, plus be out looking for the next new client.  Introduce your team early and often.

Strategic VS. Tactical – When you are introducing your solutions (could be a wellness program, a communication strategy, an employee engagement survey, etc.) don’t stop at describing the tactical impact of the solution, go further and explain the strategic impact.  It is the impact made strategically that will give them the most confidence.

Here’s an example of the difference – Tactical impact is communicated by describing the features of the solution.  If introducing ID Theft Protection as a solution you would describe how it monitors the credit bureaus, has a reimbursement feature, etc..  However, the strategic impact would go on to describe what it will allow to happen.  How by keeping their employees’ identity from being stolen, the company will also be protected from lost productivity due to employees spending work hours trying to regain their identity.

Plan For Success – Despite all of the obvious benefits of your solutions, the prospect will struggle with a belief that they will actually be able to enjoy the benefits.  Their struggle will come from concerns (probably based on past experiences) that the solutions will actually be put into place.  By delivering a detailed plan of implementation and execution explaining what will happen, when it will happen, and who will be responsible for making it happen, your prospect will have a newfound level of confidence.

Communication – Nothing will build and maintain your prospects/clients confidence than having a relationship with you built on effective communication.  By telling them during the sales process how/what/when you will communicate, they will understand that they won’t be left on their own.

So, while you are ultimately selling confidence, it is actually more of a transfer of confidence.  You are working to transfer the confidence in your ability to deliver a better experience to them.  To state the obvious, you can’t give away what you don’t yourself possess.  So, make sure you believe in your ability to deliver in each of these areas.  If you don’t currently have that belief, go fix whatever needs fixing.  Because if you don’t believe, the prospect never will either.

Photo by gerriet.

@kevintrokey

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Okay, producers, I’ll tell you right now, many of you won’t like this message.

Producers tend to think of themselves as very entrepreneurial. However, that self-description may not always be accurate. An entrepreneur is someone who takes a great deal of risk for a great deal of potential reward. While it’s true that most producers only “eat what they kill” because they work purely on commissions, it is most often the agency that takes the real risk that allows for that level of reward.

Roles and responsibilities

It’s the agency that invests in the infrastructure, support staff, computer systems, value-added services, etc. that allows the producer to go out and sell. If a producer doesn’t sell, she/he loses out on the additional revenue they would have received.  However, when a producer doesn’t sell, it’s the agency that bears the financial burden of underutilized resources.

Now don’t get me wrong; providing the resources that allow a producer to go out and sell is the agency’s primary responsibility. That is the risk they take to allow for their own reward.

However, the producer has a responsibility as well. That responsibility is to continue to create revenue; to help provide rewards for both themselves and the agency. It isn’t fair (or acceptable) for a producer to decide that she/he is satisfied with their book of business and that they don’t want/need to produce any longer.  At the very least, they can’t expect to make that decision with the assumption that there won’t be consequences.

Revenue and expenses

Like all businesses, agencies have to work off of a budget that is designed to produce an acceptable return. Budgets focus largely on two things: revenue and expenses.  Regardless of what happens to revenue, expenses continue to rise. If they are rising faster than revenue, then you erode profit – pretty straightforward. Yes, I point out the agency profit because it is the agency that bears the burden of the infrastructure. If the agency can’t do well financially, then it is only a matter of time before the individuals within the agency aren’t able to do well, either. Again, pretty straightforward.

Producers are the engines that drive revenue. Doing so is their primary responsibility. Another part of that responsibility is to help protect revenue that has already been created (retaining clients). However, doing so cannot become a distraction to generating new revenue.  Ensuring it doesn’t become a distraction and that there is a strong support team in place is another of the agency’s primary responsibilities.

Talents and skills

The talents and skills producers have are rare. What they do on a daily basis scares the hell out of most people. The thought of knocking on doors and facing rejection is paralyzing to many. That’s why producers are paid so well. However, with those talents and skills comes the responsibility to use them. If producers aren’t using those talents and skills, the agency gets cheated, their family gets cheated, potential clients get cheated — and the producer gets cheated.

There is one more group who gets cheated that I want to focus on separately – the team. The very people producers depend on to help take care of their clients depend on them in return. Chances are that their salaries, bonuses, and most other opportunities depend on the producer and her/his continued production of new revenue. When the producer plateaus, so does the team.

Revenue-per-relationship

There is only one way that producers can stop writing additional revenue and still meet their responsibility. If it’s not adding to the revenue side, then it has to be helping on the expense side. This means making the current book of business more profitable by increasing the revenue-per-relationship. To do so, it still means writing new business, but it could be writing one large account to replace many smaller ones. For the agency, the same revenue generated by fewer accounts becomes more profitable by requiring fewer resources. For the producer, the upside is that income is maintained, but overall workload is greatly reduced through the reduction of the workload required by too many small accounts.

Upside and reality check

Yes, producers, you have a great responsibility, but along with that responsibility comes an unbelievable upside. You are provided a terrific opportunity to earn a great income, have great work/life balance and have an overall enviable lifestyle.  These opportunities aren’t an entitlement; they are the reward for you accepting and meeting your responsibility.

If you choose not to meet your responsibility, or if you convince yourself that by having gotten your book to $X you have already met your responsibility, or if you decide to leave it up to other producers to produce new revenue, don’t be surprised if the agency has to change the rules on you a bit. If you truly are an entrepreneur, you’ll understand that if your revenues don’t grow, your expenses will have to be adjusted.

By continually meeting your responsibility, you can earn unbelievable rewards. You just have to ask yourself, “How badly do I really want it?”

Photo by Mike Love.

@kevintrokey

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I think sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we are playing aggressively - that we are doing whatever it takes to win.  However, I would challenge that all too often, we are simply playing to not lose.

The biggest contributor to this phenomenon is complacency.  As producers, we spend our career building a book of business, doing the right things - the hard things, the things it takes to win. 

Then we wake up one day and say, “Holy crap, look what I’ve done!  I never really expected to get here!  I better protect it!”

And then it happens
Instead of continuing to play to win, we start playing to not lose.

Instead of looking for ways of helping clients that neither of you ever imagined, you stay with what’s comfortable.  Instead of pushing them to the point that they say, “I can’t go there, at least not yet, but help me get ready,” you hope they don’t push you for something new. 

Instead of giving them new reasons to say yes to you, you focus on not giving them a reason to say no to you. And you hope nobody else comes along and gives them a reason to say yes.

There’s an old saying, “What got you here will keep you here.” That’s a saying whose time has past. 

I now believe that what got you here will take you back to where you were yesterday.

When you play to win, you may outgrow a client or two, but you will grow into countless others.

When you play to not lose, your clients will outgrow you.

So, how are you going to play the game?

As nice as it would be if it were different, having the right tools doesn’t mean a thing if you aren’t willing to put in the hard work to use them effectively.

• Setting up a Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn account won’t make you a better communicator.  In fact, it’s likely to expose your current weaknesses.

• Setting up a CRM system will be discouraging if you have no prospects/clients to fill it up.

• Having a laundry list of solutions you can take to your clients can actually be distracting and confusing if you don’t understand how they will make a difference when put in place.

Anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, can go out and get the tools.  Do you want to separate yourself from the competition?  Then focus on the skills you need to make the tools more effective and start a development plan.  That’s something all too few anybodies will ever do successfully.  I understand that it's difficult, and that’s the very reason you have to go do it.

• If you want to be a better communicator, start with reading more.

• Spend time detailing and executing the marketing/prospecting/sales plan that will produce the prospects/clients that will make a CRM system necessary.

• Look beyond your list of solutions and the features they offer and identify the value they will create when used properly.

Going and getting more tools is the lazy way out.  Stop fooling yourself that acquiring them is a step in the right direction; it’s simply allowing you to procrastinate from doing what you really need to be doing.

Photo by Frédéric BISSON.

I am an avid reader and am almost always in the middle of a book or two.  I enjoy reading and learning, but I also feel that it is a responsibility I have as someone who regularly works to help others find their success.  Then again, that responsibility isn’t unique to me; I’ll argue that it applies to anyone who has clients who turn to you for advice.

So, I wanted to share my favorite books from 2010 and a little of what I learned from each.   Wendy got excited about this and wanted to participate, so I let her add her thoughts, as well.  It’s always interesting what different things people take away from the exact same situation.

“A Seat At The Table” by Marc Miller

What I learned – I learned how to clearly identify the types of strategic decisions made by decision makers.  With that knowledge, I have been able to develop a process through which the producers with whom I can work can position their solutions in a much more strategic manner and in a way that resonates more clearly with the C-suite.

Wendy weighs in:  Sales people often have a skewed view of how their solutions (read: product) benefit the client, therefore, making it difficult to transition from a product selling organization to a solution selling organization.  Marc shows us that it is possible to makes this transformation with an existing sales team when you’ve got the right vision and leadership to enforce the changes company-wide.

“Inbound Marketing” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

What I learned – I learned that the rules of marketing have changed.  Creating a brand is no longer just about writing a check, it’s about getting out there and becoming a participant in social media.  When you give a prospect a reason to initiate engagement with you, well, obviously, your likelihood of success goes up exponentially.  While I don’t think the ideas in the book completely replace traditional approaches to marketing, I do agree that they need to be an integral part of any marketing strategy.

Wendy’s 2 cents: I thought that Inbound Marketing provided a good overview and action guide for creating your online marketing plan with to-do lists and tools to get the job done.  However, to get a good in-depth understanding of how social marketing can be a viable & critically important marketing vehicle for your business, I recommend The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott. Read the 1st half and get a full understanding of the New Rules, and read the second half to figure out how to make it happen. Then get started!  If you haven’t yet embraced social marketing as an integral part of your business, you’re falling behind.

“Getting Naked” by Patrick Lencioni

What I learned – This is probably the most impactful book I have read all year.  Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is the most empowering characteristic you can take into your client relationships.  We have to recognize that one safe idea is rarely going to result in the best solution.  Instead, we have to sort through countless ideas, some horrible and some great, to make sure the one best solution is identified.   As strong as the idea of vulnerability has proven to me, an even more powerful message is to start acting as though you have already been hired as early in the prospecting stage as possible.  The sooner you start delivering value, the sooner you will get hired.

Wendy’s takeaway: This is an outstanding book that helps bridge the drastic difference in personal vs. business relationship expectations that have been so prevalent in American culture.  Building any type of relationship requires trust, and without allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, there is always at least a little bit of doubt about motivations. Business relationships are not excused from this idea of vulnerability and trust; although I believe that the rules of professionalism have dictated a reserved approach with clients.  Lencioni not only gives us permission to drop those walls that create the professional distance, he insists that it’s critically necessary for doing business today.

“The Upside” by Adrian Slywotzky

What I learned* – While businesses tend to focus their risk management strategies on the traditional risks (hazard, financial, and operational), they are quite often ignoring the strategic risks, some of which are certain to be faced by every organization at one time or another.  Strategic risk has become one of the greatest sources of lost value in the global economy.  While it is impossible to avoid these risks entirely, those companies who understand them, anticipate them, shape them, and implement effective counter measure strategies will find they’re in a much better position to survive and even thrive in today’s risk-rich environment.  The “upside” of this risk awareness becomes an opportunity to expose the risks for the opportunities that lie within.

*I read this in 2009, as you'll see from the linked article, but we held a book club on it in 2010, so it made the list.

Wendy’s thoughts: I loved this book and reference it frequently for it’s great examples and excellent explanations. Strategic risks target crucial elements in the design of your business model, company vision/values, and company culture.  These risks can be avoided or at least mitigated if your model is flexible enough to adjust to changes in the industry or the economy.  In order to do that, you must structure the other foundational elements of your business to be passionately focused on the customer, and to be acutely aware, at all levels of the organization, what is happening in the industry, the local marketplace, and with your competition.  With awareness, ingenuity, and adaptability (the new must-have’s for today’s businesses) you’ll able to find the opportunities within the risks  - and without, you’ll be one of Slywotzky’s historical comparison companies.

So, there are just four of the books we read last year and maybe a couple of reasons for you to pick them up and read them for yourselves.  While we’re not necessarily encouraging you to read these books, we are challenging you to read books that will benefit you and, in turn, help you to benefit your clients.

What was your favorite read from 2010?  And why?

We often talk about “bringing value to clients” and helping them “address their needs” rather than just selling them a product or service.  But what does that really mean?

“They need the product I’m selling, so isn’t that filling the need?”

Well, sort of.  That’s part of the need.  But why do they really need the product in the first place?  In the case of employee benefits, it’s because they have employees, and they want to attract and retain top-quality employees to help them run a successful business.  When looking at it from that perspective, you can begin to ask the questions that will take you beyond the product sale.  “What else do they need in order to attract & retain those employees?”

I’ve included a real-life example of how this approach might work.  It’s not about employee benefits, but I’m hoping it helps paint a picture of how a product vendor can become a valuable partner in helping shape and improve business operations.

My former business partner & I owned and ran a local off-site creative meeting facility, and providing lunch was one of our services. Our goal was to make meetings easy and productive for the client.  Which meant taking a bulk of the work away from the client – like having to worry about menus (because we all know that food is a critical part of a meeting!).  We handled most of the food details and wowed attendees with great snacks & meals.  

When we first opened, we worked with a handful of different restaurants & caterers, and logistically it was complicated and took a lot of time.

As we started holding more meetings, it became apparent what our food strategy really needed to be, and none of our current providers were preparing and delivering food in the way we wanted.  So we started asking for special preparations.  There was one restaurant in town that was able to do everything we wanted, and they did it well, so we began relying on them more and more. 

One day they called and invited us to a meeting with their owners and the catering managers.  They outlined what they perceived our needs to be and told us they wanted to make the food logistics as easy as possible for us. They offered some suggestions on how we might do that, which opened the door to a great discussion-turned-planning session.

From that meeting, we modified and streamlined the ways we ordered food, and they modified and streamlined the ways they prepared, packed, and delivered the food.

The result?

We ordered almost exclusively from them for all of our meetings. We also started calling them before booking special events to ask them for suggestions, rather than calling them afterward to let them know we needed to place an order.

There were other restaurants that would call us and ask if there were any upcoming meetings for which we might need catering.  These calls were really about more sales for themselves, thinly disguised as an interest in helping us.

Yes, our primary restaurant was also interested in increasing their business with us, but the critical difference was in how they approached us:

They didn’t ask if we had more meetings they could cater, they asked, “How can we make your life easier and your events better?”

They genuinely discussed ideas and options and then went to work to make it happen.  Instead of telling us what their procedures were and how we would need to modify our business model to fit theirs, they actually adapted their own internal processes to accommodate our needs!

They earned our trust and gained our business. And all clients that came through our facility and raved about the food also knew whom to credit for the delicious meals - we were raving fans and were sure to let everyone know!

When you take the time to think about a client or prospect, spend the time wondering “How can I help make their jobs easier?  Improve their processes?  Make their business better? Help them achieve their vision?” If you understand their business model and you’ve got some ideas that might help them improve productivity, profitability, or company vision and goals, then you’ve got a great reason to ask for a meeting.

What are your thoughts or stories?  We'd love to hear about them!

@wendykeneipp

Photo from the Room2Think archives.

I hear benefit producers complain about fourth quarter all the time.  They talk about how crazy it is, there are so many renewals to handle, there just isn’t enough time for everything.  The complaints go on and on and all of a sudden they have themselves convinced that there isn’t time to get everything done, and something has to go.  Unfortunately, they usually choose prospecting as the first thing to eliminate.

Yeah, fourth quarter is busy, I get that, but prospecting is just about the last thing a producer needs to ignore.   If you let up on your prospecting activity for the last three months of the year, you are digging yourself a hole that will make the following year much harder than it needs to be. 

When you look at what makes the most successful producers successful, you will always see a steady approach to prospecting.  Producers who only prospect when their pipeline is empty have inconsistent results and find themselves working on any account who will listen, which are often the wrong ones.

Make the 4th quarter more manageable and successful

By understanding what needs to be eliminated and what needs full focus, not only will the fourth quarter be more manageable, the next year will be more successful, as well.

Do Not…

o    Get involved in routine service issues
o    Spend time in carrier discussions about every renewal and every option
o    Allow yourself to be random about how you schedule your week

DO…

o    Maintain your focus to manage a hectic 4th quarter
o    Hold yourself accountable for both quality and quantity of prospects in your pipeline
o    Block out time every day for prospecting
o    Identify your weekly “have tos” and dedicate time on your weekly calendar for their completion

I’ll argue that with proper discipline you do have time for everything you need to be doing - even in the 4th quarter.  The key phrase is “need to be doing”.  The things that you won’t get done are just busy work you shouldn’t be doing anyway.

Really, these “do nots” and “dos” are rules you should follow all year long, but with the craziness of 4th quarter, you just don’t have a choice.  And because your competition won’t find the discipline they need, and will let their prospecting efforts go, is exactly the reason that it's time for you to push your sales efforts harder than ever.

Selling is a 4-quarter game.  If the offense doesn’t take the field for all 4 quarters, it’s an impossible game to win.

Photo by shortchineseguy.