Month: April 2009

When you write, who do you think about? How do you phrase your ideas? Who are you speaking with when you write?

My audience for this blog is entirely composed of two people. Let’s call them George and Dave.

George and I have great email discussions about happiness research and life.
Dave and I connect about sales, entrepreneurship, public speaking, and general life-is-good principles.

These are the two people I write for. I know that often grimo1re and Nick bring incredible ideas to this blog, and we have super discussions here. The comments and discussions in the comments section are the most invigorating part of running a blog. That’s why I’m so enjoying being on twitter and chatting with people and moving ideas ahead. Still, when I think about the areas in which I have huge passion and desire to write more and challenge ideas and be challenged, I know those areas are the areas that I discuss consistently with George and Dave. It’s like Hugh McLeod said: “Passion. Authority. Continuity.”

You’ll recognize this. My second to last article was about about getting salespeople to change (for Dave) and my last article was about a wonderful hug (for George).

Hi Dave. Hi George. Hi to you with whom this resonates. :)

I’ve recently been researching how to get salespeople to change what they’re doing, and here are some resources you may like.

My favorite tip of these below is to reward the questions the salespeople are asking.

Interesting articles:

• Salespeople are Like Children – I really like this article because a lot of “how to change salespeople” articles talk about giving them rewards for behaviors that you want to encourage. Well, this three-paragraph post says to reward the questions the salespeople ask. I think a lot of change is about questions. So it might be interesting to figure out a way to reward questions.
• Salespeople are Like Children – The Series – A delightful! series about how salespeople are like children and how to incite them to change using similar techniques as with children. All the articles are super-short and just fun. Thanks, Dave Kurlan!
• Beyond Passive Resistance: Motivating Salespeople to Adopt Change – There are a few fun, useful, and concrete tips in here such as increasing your communication of your vision by a factor of 10 and creating short-term wins, something I believe in incredibly strongly.
• Why Sales Managers Fail and What You Can Do About It – I think #8 is the most important (understanding how the brain works), and this tip is covered fabulously in How to Sell to VITO (Very Important Top Officer). Also tips #6 and #7 are fabulous.