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Drinking My Own Kool Aid

Written by: Craig James

Article Overview: It's always a good idea to take time to review how you're doing, and invest in improving yourself.

Drinking My Own Kool Aid

Every so often - including at year-end, where we are today - I set aside some time to read some of the stuff I've written over the last 6 years. Like everyone else, I get wrapped up in the daily grind of making a living - and tend to neglect reinforcing fundamental skills, and making sure I'm exhibiting the behaviors I should be. That task has been made easier since I put together and published the Sales Solution Action Item Compendium. Since I tend to evaluate myself in terms of categories, the Compendium - which is organized (you guessed it) by categories - helps me quickly get to the articles I want to review without having to sift through all 69 of them.

One I always find myself going back to is Back to Basics. I don't care how long you've been in your profession, whatever that might be - there is always a tendency to get lazy and stray from performing the fundamentals flawlessly. This article is a good reminder for me to catch myself from doing just that - and where necessary, to get "back to basics". Several I've revisited recently are in the Commitment category. One I've internalized and use regularly (unfortunately, as I'm finding that prospects are taking longer to make decisions) is Gaining Commitment. I'm finding - as I'm sure many of you are - that prospects are more cautious these days in engaging in conversations they know will require them to open their wallets. This article contains some ideas I've used to deal with this caution.

Another article the lessons of which I've internalized is When to Hold 'Em, and When to Fold 'Em. After years of hanging on to "opportunities" that really weren't, I have become ruthless when it comes to maintaining a healthy pipeline by culling out the "dead wood" - those who are going to eat up my valuable time but have no intention of buying. If I don't feel an opportunity is going anywhere (for example, if the prospect has become unresponsive), I make one last attempt to revive the deal, and if I don't get a response, the prospect gets mailed the "Surrender Letter" mentioned in Creating Urgency. They then come off the active pipeline, and I move on to other, better-potential prospects who really need what I'm selling, and who need it now.

Now, one thing I never included in any of my articles, which I'll add here, is something I've begun incorporating from the Sandler Sales System. While I am not a proponent of that system, if a system has some idea they espouse that I feel makes sense (and many do), I'd be foolish to refuse to implement it. Sandler calls their technique the Upfront Contract; it goes hand-in-hand with what I wrote about in both How to Avoid "No Decisions" and Use Take-Aways to Engage Reluctant Prospects. The objective of the Upfront Contact is to pre-empt the all-too-common vanishing prospect phenomenon - the one in which the prospect with whom you've been engaged for weeks suddenly stops returning your calls and replying to your e-mails. The one who leaves you in the uncomfortable (and weak) role of chaser. The "contract" is an agreement that states that if at any time one party decides to discontinue discussions, that party will extend the professional courtesy of not hiding from the other party, but rather will inform that party that they have decided not to continue discussions with them. The parties also agree that the receiving party will have no hard feelings, and other than asking "why", will not attempt to re-engage the discontinuing party. For us as sellers, this removes the #1 reason prospects go dark - they are uncomfortable sharing bad news with someone who's been so helpful to them. The Upfront Contract stipulates that it's OK to deliver such news, without having to feel guilty about it. What often happens, of course, is that when the prospect does call to give the bad news, and you ask why, your probing questions should be able to help the prospect convince himself that he really ought to continue discussions with you!

As we wind down the year of 2009 and begin a new decade (yes, I know the new decade technically began on January 1, 2009 - but cut me some slack for being a year late!), block out some time on your calendar to close the door, unhook the phone, shut down e-mail, and allow yourself a couple of hours to "Sharpen Your Saw", as Stephen Covey out it in The 7 Habits of Highly-Effective People. And while I'm not asking you to necessarily drink my Kool-Aid, at least consider stirring up a batch of your own by doing a self-evaluation to determine to what extent you're using the skills you've learned and developed throughout your career, and that you're exhibiting the behaviors you should be in order to continue being successful.

Good Selling

Craig

Author's note:The italicized items are the titles to newsletters in the article archive on my web site, which you can find in my bio

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Article Tags: sales skills, selfimprovement, selling



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Profile: Julia Cameron: journalist, screenwriter, poet, nove - Julia Cameron will be one of our featured speakers at the Ladies Who Launch NYC Speaker Series taking place on April 28. Click for more info. Julia Cameron is an accomplished journalist, screenwriter, poet, novelist, and playwright. But mention her name in conversation and inevitably it will be linked with The Artist's Way, a workbook for those looking to discover or re-discover their creative selves, which was initially published in 1992 and has sold over 3 million copies. Cameron grew up in Chicago and began her career writing for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone (where she met director Martin Scorsese, whom she married in 1975 and later divorced). While married to Scorsese, she worked on the screenplays for two of his major films: Taxi Driver and New York, New York. Cameron's first musical, Avalon, was staged in 1998. At 60, Cameron continues to follow the advice she espouses in The Artist's Way: jotting down her thoughts daily in her "morning pages" and channeling her artistic vision into a variety of projects. Below, read how Cameron fends off writer's block (yes, even she suffers from it sometimes), calls on friends for guidance, and dispels the myth that writers need to be miserable to be good. what we learned from julia: "If you're good at doing one thing, you should keep doing it. In England, writers are novelists, playwrights—the word 'writer' covers a wider spectrum of activity." She also said to take a bet on yourself; she did, and it's paid off. her true calling "I was born to write. All my brothers and sisters—there are seven of us altogether—are in the arts. My father was in advertising and mom had a master's degree in English and wrote poetry. By the time I was in sixth grade with Mrs. Klopsch, I was already writing short stories and poems." investigating journalism "My goal was to write short stories. When I was offered a job at the Washington Post, it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. I enjoy writing in any form. I was proud of my Rolling Stone pieces. I wrote one about E. Howard Hunt's children. I remember getting in trouble with William F. Buckley. He called my house in Chicago because he thought it was a terrible thing I'd interviewed the children—he was their godfather. My first taste of celebrity was getting a good scolding. During my 20s I was a blind beginner. In my 30s I was a lot more conscious about what I wrote." screenwriting savvy "My early screenwriting was for my husband at the time, Martin Scorsese. I worked on Taxi Driver and on New York, New York. When Marty and I got divorced, I had a screenwriting career to pursue. I sold movies to Paramount. They bought the movie but didn't make it. I was frustrated, so I took the money I earned writing for Miami Vice and made a feature film in Chicago." sobering experience "1978 is the year that I got sober. My wild ways came screeching to a halt. I needed to find a way to write sober. I had always associated writing with drinking. We have a mythology around creativity that's destructive. We think you have to be broke, alone, neurotic, addicted. None of these things is true. When I got sober, I had to find a way to work soberly. I was 29, and I had a daughter who was a year old." do it for love, not money "I've never had to be paid to write. I published two novels. I have a musical opening in Chicago in the fall. Last year I had a play in L.A. The trick is to not need a guarantee and to be willing to write no matter what. Right now I'm writing a sequel to [my novel] Mozart's Ghost, which came out on Valentine's Day. I did the novel without a contract. I bet on myself." the power of friendship "It helps if you have friends who believe in you. My friends read my first drafts. A lot of times they will believe in a project when I'm getting rejected. We underestimate the importance of having one strong friend. The telephone is a wonderful ally to combat the isolation of being a writer, as is e-mail. If you know what your friends are doing, it's harder to feel lonely. I also think writing is its own companion. You're not lonely when you're actually writing." a typical day, the artist's way "I get up late. If I can, it's noon. I write my morning pages first thing. I ask for guidance and sit quietly and see if there's anything I need to be doing. I usually work on the music [for my upcoming musical]. I have a collaborator, Emma Lively, and we've written three musicals together. We work for a few hours. Then I put in a couple hours of prose writing. I sometimes don't get out of the house until 5:30. I try to get a walk in every day." overcoming writer's block "I use the same unblocking tools that I teach my students. They make you much more alert to the signals. I grapple with writer's block right away. Morning pages [three pages of writing about anything that comes to your head] are one such tool. I've been writing them for 25 years. In The Artist's Way, I also write about "blasting through blocks." By listing any angers, fears, and resentments related to a project, that often clears the decks right away. Emma and I have been hired to write music for a one-woman show. I feel blocked around it. I take a look at my ego—I'm not used to working FOR people anymore. I need to be a beginner again. Hopefully once I surrender my need to be the boss, it'll work out." favorite books "Tim Farrington is my favorite writer. He's written two books—The Monk Downstairs and The Monk Upstairs. He's so funny and deft, and he was the inspiration for me to write Mozart's Ghost. I dedicated the book to him." daily must-reads "I read a little teeny book called Twenty-Four Hours a Day that was put out by Hazelden. It's a meditation book. I also read Creative Ideas by theologian Ernest Holmes, which was originally published in 1934. They just re-released it, and I wrote the intro. Right now I'm reading My First Five Husbands by Rue McClanahan and Drinking: A Love Story, a memoir by Caroline Knapp." most rewarding career moment "I think I'm sort of singular in that I like book tours. I meet people who say I used your tools and they changed my life and this is what I did with them." scariest career moment "Watching my first musical go up in 1998. It's scary. I just heard the music so beautifully in my head that it was hard to deal with some of the compromises of getting it on the stage. I was sitting in the back of the theater saying, 'It's brilliant. It's awful." on networking "I think it's most important that we do the work and then have something to network about. Sometimes people want networking to be a shortcut or a guarantee. Networking gives you a sense of the possible. I have a number of women friends in their 70s and 80s and they are a tremendous source of inspiration. One runs a horse ranch. One got a master's in poetry at 75. One is in her 80s and is still an active actress. I believe that other women are inspirational." parting thoughts... -"I am happiest when ... I'm writing." -"Success to me means ... creativity." -"The public figure I wish most would read The Artist's Way is ... Warren Beatty. I don't know if he has." -"I will always think of myself as ... a good horseback rider." -"My business would not have happened if ... I waited for guarantees." -"The most important thing I do every day is ... stay sober. I have 30 years without a drink." This Featured Lady was profiled by Michele Shapiro, a writer living in New York City.


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