Sales is more than just a numbers game...

Podcast: Disc Seven – Managing your Time and Effort

Time management is essential to achieve sales success. One of the oldest adages I continue to encourage people to use is, “Plan your work, and work your plan.” In this disc, I will focus on the merits of journaling and planning your time wisely. In this episode of the One Goal - Revenue Generation ® series, Peter Kusterer of NvestNtech walks you through the introduction and content that is presented in the Disc Seven episodes of the Podcast series. Download this episode - “Disc Seven – Managing your Time and Effort.”

Click on this link for the Podcast directory that includes the One Goal - Revenue Generation ® series, as well as additional Podcast episodes and related topics. Our podcasts are featured on iTunes, Odeo, and Podcast Alley.

Innovation: Great Day Lawn-Pro (tractor) Lawnmower Hi-Hitch from Sears

I’m always on the lookout for simple and innovative products that fit a wide range of use, or consumers. It’s even better when I get leads on products from regular readers/subscribers who have put one to use. This one comes from Scot Finch, with TriSure (insurance and risk management services).

Scot sent me a note that described his need to move various items around the home that required the pulling power of his lawn tractor. Typical items included a “JetSki, water toys, and a small utility trailer.” Being the inventive type, Scot had “made a few homemade versions (of the attached - picture) to move the various items around the yard, with each one eventually failing.”

The Great Day Lawn-Pro Lawnmower Hi-Hitch that Scot found at his local Sears store offered him the simplicity of installation and use that would fit a wide range of situations. “Additionally, I can still pull Garden tractor attachments (lawn cart, aerator, etc) with it as well, thanks to the hole on the bottom.” Worth noting is that unlike the picture, the hitch does not include the “ball” for the trailer mount.

In Scot’s case, he runs a John Deere lawn tractor and as he put it, he was prepared to “modify and tweak it” to fit his machine. “This device is excellent and with a couple modifications to fit my tractor, is an excellent addition to the tool collection.” Others may need to do the same, even though it looks like a universal fit for many models and styles of mounting.

This reminds me a bit of the Swisher ATV QuickSwitch™ System I featured some time back; that innovation came from a reader/subscriber as well. Like this hitch, both offer additional utilization from existing equipment rather than buying something new to meet the task at hand.

If you have an innovative product that is simple and inexpensive, and you have found it especially useful for you, send me a note and offer a brief experience story. I can’t promise it will be featured, but I will try and put as many forward as possible.

Career reflection births ode to old school employment

As I prepared for an upcoming presentation – more about that next week – for the weekly gathering of CareerNet at SAPC, my notes were getting longer than the allotted time slot would allow. I found myself reflecting on many of my personal experiences related to my presentation that was titled, “Surviving the Job Interview – What can I do for an encore?”

In the process of putting the notes together, I waned nostalgic on how employment has changed over the years. From this reflection, I put to pen this simple ode to old school employment:

Gone are the pensions without too much thought; enter the complexities of 401Ks, and the need to plan your own retirement.
Gone is on-the-job training; enter the need to complete online courses and acquire certifications.
Gone is the goal of a corner desk, or office with a window; enter a temporary cubicle, virtual office, or a spot at a coworking facility.
Gone is water cooler gab; enter collaborative communication from a wiki, blog, or social networking site.
Gone is typing a memo with a simple QWERTY keyboard; enter starting over again with Office 2007’s radically new ‘ribbon’ interface.
And the Peter Principle is 40 years old!

Podcast: When your callback reminder pops up, don’t hit snooze.

You have adopted a new, automated system to remind you when to call people; but, when the alarms start to go off, there are far too many and you can’t seem to deal with them. Your answer is to press “snooze”. However, within a short time, you are overwhelmed by another onslaught of alarms. How can you better manage this predicament? In this episode of the One Goal - Revenue Generation ® series, Peter Kusterer of NvestNtech helps you determine the best intervals to return calls by using a planned approach to automated reminders and alarms. Download this episode - “When your callback reminder pops up, don’t hit snooze.”

Click on this link for the Podcast directory that includes the One Goal - Revenue Generation ® series, as well as additional Podcast episodes and related topics. Our podcasts are featured on iTunes, Odeo, and Podcast Alley.

One Goal - Revenue Generation ® Podcast series – We’re back!

To those of you who have asked about the gap in recordings, “We’re back!” In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing some new Podcasts for your listening pleasure. Fresh from a studio session, as soon as the edits are completed, we’ll push up the new releases. In the mean time, please visit the entire library of Podcasts.

If you are not a subscriber, please sign-up for a download from the iTunes Store, or Odeo. This makes it easy to get each episode that contains straightforward and seasoned advice; the series serves as an audio ‘pocket guide’ of selling and sales management tips. Most of the episodes are less than 3 minutes in length and are grouped into discs and tracks, like the chapters of a book.

Also, we would like you to become an active member of our new Group on LinkedIn. This Group is for listeners and subscribers to discuss the tips and ideas offered in the One Goal - Revenue Generation ® Podcast. These audio podcasts are focused on enhanced selling methods and better business models in brief, practical audio tips; they offer sales coaching for a variety of selling situations.

Don’t forget to write! We enjoy hearing from you by email, or Comments here in the blog. Thanks for listening…your support and encouragement makes for a rewarding experience.

Innovation: Philips AJL308 - Clock radio morphs into digital picture frame and multimedia platform

Long gone are the days of the clock radio with paddleboat style numbers that would flip around for the time, and offer basic radio reception to wake you up, or put you to sleep. For those people that still use a clock radio for the morning wake-up call, you can now enjoy a more interactive, multimedia experience.

Philips developed the  AJL308 clock radio in a form factor that can deliver a variety of consumer entertainment experiences, yet stay true to its mission. Set to clock radio mode, you have the traditional time, date, and multiple alarm functions displayed on a generous 7” LCD TFT color display. The bonus is your favorite picture or photo sits as a thumbnail (of sorts) image to the right of the time display. Much like I appreciate the larger numbers on my new cell phone, the large color display is ideal for viewing the time and date at a distance, or without your glasses.

Wake-up modes offer a new experience of preloaded “nature” sounds, a more traditional favorite like a radio show or music, or the rude awakening of a buzzer. There are some meditation-like sounds - rain showers, ocean waves, and spa music - that can help you fall asleep. I’m not so sure that offering rain showers is a wise choice for those not wanting to make a bathroom run in the middle of the night.

Variable brightness control of the screen intensity can be set manually or programmed for auto dim start and stop times. The new digital clock I installed on our double built-in oven combination is bright enough to dimly light a corner of the kitchen. I suppose that if you weren’t diligent in setting the brightness of the 7” LCD screen for your bedroom, you’d be trying to fall asleep with the feeling of a high beam headlight staring at you.

Here’s where the AJL308 clock radio from Philips starts to distance itself from the traditional role. From a multimedia perspective, you have available a platform to deliver photos, pictures, video, your own music selections, and over-the-air radio music or news. With a USB flash drive and SD/MMC card slot, you can easily load a variety of your favorite choices or selections.

Maybe this clock radio can be more than just a typical bedside companion. You can enjoy a full screen slide show – with some control like transition effects and timing, as well as browse mode - on the LCD display while listening to your favorite music or video, or set your favorite picture in a smaller thumbnail to compliment the date and time display. Also you can set the background wallpaper – Blue / Green / Red / Purple - for a more personalized appearance or decor.

I can see this clock radio moving into the kitchen, office, or college dorm room. It seems to be a more practical gift to share family photos with grandparents, than a standalone digital picture frame, too.

Book Review - Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Teal Book of Trust

Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Teal Book of Trust: How to Earn It, Grow It, and Keep It to Become a Trusted Advisor in Sales, Business and Life

A book review by Don Kusterer

One may wonder whether a “raving fan” of Jeffrey Gitomer can objectively review his latest book on the topic of trust in “…Sales, Business and Life.” I will ask you to trust me for a moment, and then let you decide for yourself.

In a single sentence, if you’ve ever lost a sale, a customer, or a relationship, you must ask yourself why it happened and how you got there in the first place. Doing so will help you grow personally and avoid this mistake in the future. Gitomer’s latest book provides a framework for understanding trust, relationships, getting and keeping business, as well as giving you a number of tips and insight into the reasons behind these fundamentals.

If you are a system or process-oriented sales executive, this may not be a book that would attract your immediate interest. From my perspective, Gitomer is anti-system sell and writes in language that is easy to understand and embraces simple truth. That being said, you might do yourself well by reading it to get the other side of the argument.  He does have a tendency to “rant” (to use his term), and one needs to get past both the ranting and the constant reference to his business. In this book, Gitomer expands his reasons for saying what he does and why it’s important to know.

From this readers viewpoint, he either misses an important point about authenticity and sincerity, or I missed it by ‘sped redding’ and losing comprehension. In my mind, authenticity and sincerity are created by looking our customers in the eye when we talk to them. So many of us fail to perform this simple act and miss the benefit of the instant trust this meaningful action creates.

Gitomer is tuned-in to the way he does business and goes to extremes in everything he does; you have to admire both his passion and authenticity. He has been extremely successful and is recognized as a foremost expert on selling. I’ve been reading his columns, articles, and books from the beginning, and I am currently subscribed to “Sales Caffeine”, Gitomer's weekly sales e-zine.

One needs to view all of his books much like you eat fish that you just pulled out of the water; fry it, chew on it, and spit out the bones. In the Little Teal Book of Trust, his simple 17.5 elements of relationships are right-on for today’s complicated sales processes. Jeff is real in his illustration and timely with this tome. 

If successful sales and leadership are your goal, this book does not contain all the answers for success, but it certainly does contain many of the real pieces of the process. The Little Teal Book of Trust, like all of Gitomer’s earlier works, contains golden nuggets of knowledge that anyone, of any age or experience level, can extract from within. Where else can you find 198 pages of large print, easy to read gold at under $1.50 an ounce? 

This book is a simple “how to” edition that reads easily and naturally; it will fall into my library as a sequel to his other books that I often recommend while training new salespeople. Trust me; this one is worth its weight for the recently hired or really experienced salesperson, as well as those who manage them, who aspire to be a ‘Trusted Advisor’ rather than seen as just a peddler of wares.

“Don’t look for the leader; instead let the line form behind you.” – Don Kusterer

Don Kusterer is a sales and marketing executive with Care Line Inc., an industry-leading custom packaging and medical pillow manufacturing company headquartered in Greenbrier TN. He has over 40 years experience in sales, recruiting, training and management in the health care industry.