Taking personal days: Very good.

I read this quote today and it's apropos of my day off "It's time to mitigate the urgent to focus on the important."

What makes someone successful as a sales consultant?

In a few weeks, I’ll head up to Rochester NY to my company’s headquarters to speak to a class of newly hired sales consultants for a few days. I’ve been thinking a little about what makes a successful sales representative, so here goes:

I’ve been in business to business sales for over 10 years and if there’s one thing I’ve learned – it’s that when people succeed at sales they always posses these few key traits:

1. Personality
2. Desire to win
3. Money motivated

Lets start with personality. This seems pretty obvious, but for some reason boring-ass people keep getting sales jobs! When I interviewed sales candidates, I rarely read their resume before the interview. I wanted to see what it was like sit across from a total stranger and have a conversation with them. How comfortable are they small talking? Segwaying from the weather to the job interview? Did they keep me interested? In retrospect, about 70% of their “grade” came from this 10-15 minute introduction period. Yes, that important.

Action item: Be energetic, have something topical to say, ask really good questions, then ask follow-up questions. Move naturally to the next topic.

Desire to win. This is a very multifaceted trait that refers to a competitive person, someone who has the innate drive to find a way to get it done, to be a leader, to be a “go to” person, to be a resource, to be THE best.

Action item: Seek-out and implement strategies of proven success. Challenge yourself after every sale “could I have been better?” and after every no sale “what will I do different next time?”

Money Motivated. What is the job of a sales rep? To separate a prospect from his money in return for a product or service. In the absence of value, all purchase decisions revert to cost. The money motivated sales consultant will find a way to eloquently and cheerfully convey to you that the benefit of their service FAR outweighs the cost for one reason: to separate you from your money. And, when you buy – you’ll write that check with a smile.

Action item: Find the “pain” and help them to feel it now, then clearly explain point for point, how your solution takes away that pain for the investment of $$$$$.

Lastly, for those of you who don’t like us sales reps, remember this fact: Nothing happens until something is sold.

YouMail. Voice mail on steroids

A while back, I wrote about PhoneTag and was enamored with it. Since that posting, I canceled the service and switched to the free YouMail.

YouMail is free application that handles my cell phone voice mail (and landlines if you want), but does it 10 times better than traditional voice mail.

Features:

1. When someone calls me but doesn't leave a message, YouMail looks up the phone number that called automatically and sends me a text like this: Missed Call From 610-555-5555 SMITH, JOHN Easton PA.

2. When someone calls and leaves a message, YouMail emails me the message as an mp3 file with the caller ID information.

3. Visual voicemail. When I login to their website, this is the screen I see. I can see the caller's name, caller ID information, date/time they called and listen to the message right there.

4. Unique greetings. Once you upload your contacts - you can select greetings based on caller ID. So Beck and Mom get their own greeting, caller ID blocked gets the system greeting and my buddies get a funny one.

Benefits:

-Since I am on the road most days, I don't need to write down the contact info from every voice mail I get (and I get about 10-15 a day). I can just listen to to message and know that when I need it again it will be in my account and on my email.

-Uhh, It's free.

-Caller ID on missed calls. Some people don't leave messages, and I don't have all of my contacts loaded in my phone, so when I get a missed call - I know who it was that called me and decide if I should call them back or not.

Instructions on how to make a snow angel, by Paige

LL Bean makes people happy, even though it wasn't their mistake

A blog that I've been following for a while was recently purchased by Consumer's Union (the company behind Consumer's Reports).



Here is an excerpt from today:

I wear dress shirts to work every day, so for Christmas, my wife ordered three new shirts from LL Bean. Like all my other shirts, she ordered them with my initials monogrammed on the pocket. Some of my old shirts are a little threadbare, so I was thrilled to have new shirts. (Kids, when you get older, clothing CAN be an exciting Christmas gift.) The Monday after Christmas, I pull one out of the closet to wear to work. The sleeves are too short—way too short.

I didn't try them on Christmas day because almost all of my shirts come from LL Bean. They're all the same size. I just took them from the package, washed them and hung them with my other shirts.

Turns out, my wife had confused my inseam length with my sleeve length and ordered shirts with the sleeves three inches too short. I was quite disappointed, but my wife was fuming mad at herself. That's about $150 worth of shirts that had my initials on them and I couldn't wear. We, naturally, assumed we would be stuck with the shirts. It was her error, not LL Bean's. We'd just be careful ordering in the future—"Measure twice, order once," to steal a carpenter's axiom.

I encouraged my wife to call anyway, just in case, and explain what had happened. Reluctant to admit a mistake, she waited to call until yesterday. She wasn't calling to try to return them, just to place an order for replacement shirts.

The conversation with the LL Bean customer service agent went something like this (paraphrasing):

Wife: "I placed order xxxxxxx in November, and I'd like to re-place that exact order with different size shirts."
LL Bean: "That's an odd request, why do you need to do that?"
Wife: "I ordered the shirts for my husband, and the sleeves are 3 inches too short, but it was my mistake, and they are monogrammed, so I know I can't return them."
LL Bean: "Oh, you need to send those back to us. We'll replace them for you."
Wife: "But it was my mistake. I don't want you to have to pay for my mistake. Can I just place a new order?"
LL Bean: "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't place your new order for those shirts, you'll have to send them back so we can replace them for you."
Wife: "They're monogrammed though, you won't be able to re-sell them."
LL Bean: "I understand that, but we always want to make sure our customers are 100% satisfied with their orders."

This is truly an above and beyond from LL Bean. We ordered the wrong size monogrammed shirts, called them not to try to return them but to place a new order, and LL Bean refused the new sale and instead is sending us new shirts and eating $150 on the monogrammed shirts. Instead of $300 in sales, they have $150 in sales and three ruined shirts.

Think logically (and take this test)

http://www.think-logically.co.uk/lt.htm

The many faces of Kaitlyn

These shots are from today at lunch, she may look pensive but I think that she's a little tired after playing outside.





I haven't been taking many pictures with my Olympus E500 lately and was really missing the quality pictures it takes.

Highest jump up, AND down ever

Robbie Madison's Amazing Record Jump - Watch more Sports Videos

Family communication

The way families (and friends) communicate these days.

Beck hooked us up with 2 of these webcams (after reading this) for Christmas and we were messing with them and the girls *loved* them!

They were running back and forth from each room laughing and loving the technology.

The Atlantis "Jumps The Shark" or is it vice versa?

It was all too real when hotel staff saw that one of the sharks from the famous resort aquarium had somehow jumped out of its tank and onto a nearby water slide -- called Leap of Faith -- where it managed to slide down into the pool.



The Atlantis Bahamas Aquarists believe the shark was startled by an unusual circumstance that we have no way of defining completely. In the over ten years guests have experienced the Leap of Faith, the reef shark itself, harmless to humans as it is fed regularly by our staff, had shown no previous incidences of leaping out of the water in the marine habitat ...

There was no danger to our guests or staff, both of whom interact with these sharks daily in our various interactive programs (we have guests enter the shark habitat to swim and interact with the sharks in bathing attire only).


In fact, our concern was for the animal itself who defied nature to take this leap. The entire team at Atlantis is truly saddened by the loss of this animal who had resided in the Atlantis marine habitat for over ten years."

Uh, ouugh, move!

Passenger train FAIL.

Air traffic in 24 hours

The Money Hall Problem

This is cool!

More Science Experiments videos at 5min.com

Pizza delivery FAIL

From one of my favorite places.

Coffee Mug, by Paige

Beck had left early this morning to get her hair cut and I was still lying in bed.

Paige came up to talk to me and I asked her if mommy made coffee for me and she bolted out of the room to check.

A few minutes later she returned, with this drawing (on a napkin) and told me that mommy didn't make coffee, so she made it for me.

By the way, Paige is 5 years old.

A Christmas Tradition....

The Attisanos, Magliaros and Kaines have created a winter tradition. Becky makes home made soup and awesome sweets for after the families all cut down their Christmas Tree.

Life is good.

A message from US automakers

A message from US automakers, originally uploaded by -SPK.

You won't buy our shitty cars.

So we'll be taking your money anyway.

The Bailout. Coming this January.

You probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality, with better mileage and resale value. Maybe you even thought that the years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. But you forgot one thing: We spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. So now, you're out $25 billion, plus the cost of your Subaru. Maybe next time you'll buy American like a real man. Either way, we're cool.

GM Chrysler Ford

We're the Big Three, we don't need to compete.™

Flag Football

I'm a little obsessed with playing flag fooball.  I'm not sure how often most adults get involved in true team sports like football, baseball, etc - but I can tell you this:  The last time I was involved was in high school.  That was 16 years ago. Hmm uhhh.  What exactly is it that makes us feel like men when we get organized and try our damnest to kick the other teams ass while trying not to get hurt?

This sport, not unlike many others before it,  has not been without it's injuries.  The first week I really hurt my ankle and on the same play someone had a compound fracture of his finger.  But you know what?  Every day that gets closer to Sunday morning 8 am, I get more excited to play.

How good am I?  I'm slow, I get tired quick, I miss some flags, and I get beat out a lot on routes when I'm covering.  What do I remember when I get home?  The touchdown pass I threw, the flag I got when diving and the comraderie of a bunch of good guys my age (and some my physique).

My ankle is getting better every day, thanks for asking.  Becky, the queen of all gymnastics - tapes *both* my ankles up every Sunday.  See, she can do this from her experience AS THE RECORDHOLDER IN VAULT and her ALL AROUND WINS IN MID STATE for 3 YEARS IN A ROW.  (love you babe).  I digress.

2 weeks ago, we played in the slush and the rain, this week we played in a fresh fallen snow, next week - NFL films shows up?  Doubt it, but I would be fun to watch a game through my eyes.

World Clock

A few observations about this clock:

- The net population growth this week was 1.3 million
- The earth's temperature is increasing by about one trillionth of a degree Celsius every second
-6 of 10 people who are diagnosed with cancer, die from it
-For every birth, there is roughly 1 bicycle produced
-For every three births, there is roughly 1 car produced

For you...

For you..., originally uploaded by -SPK.

... from Paige.

Happy Thanksgiving!