July 2010 | Choosing the Truth | Choosing the Truth

Just When You Had It All Figured Out – Surprise!

Written on July 29, 2010 by Jerry in entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Strategies, Small Business Success

Just when you thought you had it all figured out...

So there I was, minding my own business, traveling down the highway, when I noticed that all the cars taking my exit were slowing down pretty drastically. Naturally I slowed down too and, being the defensive driver that I am, I also checked my rear view mirror to make sure the driver behind me was following suit. Strangely enough, he wasn’t.

I did my best to get out of his way, but there simply wasn’t enough time. By the time he realized what was happening and hit his brakes, it was too late. SMACK! Bumper met bumper, a lot of glass and plastic was shattered, and two days immediately changed direction. Just like that: no warning, no preparation, no planning, just change.

Life is full of little surprises like that, some good, some not so good, and each contains a lesson…if you look for it. I know it will come as a surprise to everyone reading this, but I’ve decided to look for the lesson in my little melodrama.

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Are You Acting Like a Scared 9-Year-Old? – Guest Post by Todd Pillars

Written on July 27, 2010 by Todd Pillars in beliefs, customer engagement, entrepreneur, Small Business Success

You’re standing on the playground and it’s the first day of school. You know exactly two people – your little brother and the lady that says she’s your new teacher – neither beneficial to making new friends. You’re scared stiff and you’re at a crossroads… Do I act like them? Or, do I be myself? What’s the best way to get them all to like me?

Wisdom tells us you can’t please everyone. However, it can be tough to call some entrepreneurs wise. It’s been my experience working with first time business owners and salespeople that it’s instinctual to group “everyone” into the “user of my product/service” category. We want everyone to fall in love with our wares. It’s also been my first-hand experience that no, not everyone is your ideal prospect (or client, partner, etc). Some customers can actually cost you money! How, you ask?

By being so different from you, and most importantly your core values and beliefs, that you are forced to repeatedly convince them why they need you. Then you have the added burden of selling them your product or service. Then you have to constantly reinforce their decisions just to retain them. Have you recognized your worst clients yet?

So what’s to do about it? Repeat after me: “Just like them”.

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Calling All Members of the Choir: It’s My Un-Bio

Written on July 22, 2010 by Jerry in attitude, beliefs, Motivation, passion

Great: they asked me to write a bio for a new collaboration project I’m working on. I hate writing bios. No matter how hard I try, they always come out sounding plastic and fake and manufactured. So instead of writing a bio, I just wrote a bunch of stuff about me. I know that sounds like a bio, but it’s not. In fact, you could call it my Un-Bio.

And since I’ve been railing on in the last several posts about sharing who you are and what you believe in and why you do what you do, I decided to post my Un-Bio here, too. Let me know what you think. Or, better still, share your Un-Bio (or a link to it) in the comments.

1. I’m pretty opinionated. I don’t think that’s a bad thing; in fact, I embrace it. Really. I even include it in my bio sometimes, usually preceded by the word “outrageously”. And if you don’t believe me, just ask my friends what I think of James Cameron’s “movies”, or anyone who’s ever met me what I think of Bob Dylan’s “music” (I don’t know how, but it always seems to come up in conversation…genius my ass).

2. I love ideas. I think ideas are what make life fun. I love having ideas, and I love sharing them even more (see #1). I love hearing other people’s ideas, too, especially the brilliant ones. I love it when my ideas have sex with other people’s ideas (you can blame Matt Ridley for giving me that phrase to play with), and my ideas are pretty promiscuous. They also refuse to practice safe sex, so don’t be surprised if our ideas get together, have loads of idea sex, and spawn lots of tiny new baby ideas.

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Preaching to Your Choir

Written on July 21, 2010 by Jerry in beliefs, customer engagement, passion, Small Business Success

“If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.” – Simon Sinek

“The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” – Derek Sivers

I have a confession: I’m pretty much addicted to TED Talks. I find them inspiring…mostly because I respect the level of insight, information and intelligence the presenters share in their allotted 18 minutes. Here’s what usually happens, though: I never can watch just one. I can never resist the temptation to watch another…and another…and sometimes, another.

The problem is that, like YouTube, TED.com always has a suggestion for what to watch next based on what you’re watching now. That’s how I ended up seeing the two geniuses above speak, one after the other, and where I garnered the two quotes above.

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Put Some Heart In Your Marketing…It’s Good for Business!

Written on July 16, 2010 by Jerry in beliefs, customer engagement, mindset, Motivation, Small Business Success

When I say this has been an interesting week, you should understand that I’m probably making one of the most egregious understatements of my life so far. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that my vision of who I am and what I do has been shattered and rebuilt over the course of the past few days. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; in fact, it was just what the doctor ordered.

For the past several years, I’ve thought of myself (and promoted myself) as something of a sales expert. I want very badly and am working very hard to travel the country and the world revitalizing the lives and careers of salespeople everywhere, to be the sales trainer of choice for organizations everywhere.

I have a great WHAT: a system I call HERO Selling, which you can learn about elsewhere on this blog. HERO Selling is, I’m sure, going to change the face of sales for decades to come. I realize that belief is stupidly optimistic, and I’m OK with that.

I also have a great HOW. My vision is to talk about the things no one else is talking about, to bring topics like character, honesty and spirituality to the forefront of the conversation about what makes a great salesperson.

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The Beauty of Being Stupidly Optimistic

Written on July 13, 2010 by Jerry in attitude, beliefs, optimism

I’ve come up with a new name for the affliction in my brain; from here forward, I will refer to myself (and those like me) as stupidly optimistic. ”Stupidly optimistic” describes the condition of being excited about the future with no tangible evidence that it will be any better than today. That’s me: stupidly optimistic, almost to a fault.

I firmly believe that optimism is a key characteristic of those who succeed in life, but I’m beginning to think it may not be enough to be just plain optimistic; I think you may have to be stupidly optimistic, to push on in full expectation of a better tomorrow in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. The stupidly optimistic are the ones who never surrender; they find a way to keep moving forward when everyone else has given up. They meet defeat often, but they’re too dumb to give up. I admire people like that, and I hope to be counted among them at the end of my days.

I’ve managed to surround myself with some pretty amazing people over the past couple of years, particularly during the last six months, and I would describe every one of them as stupidly optimistic. It seems that I have little patience anymore for people who are ready to throw in the towel and give up on their dreams, and I spend less and less time with them, even the ones I was close to once. I like spending time with people who dream big and act boldly. I like risk-takers and fringe-dwellers, and even the occasional ne’er-do-well. The rebels are my tribe.

At the end of the day, the only thing that’s going to get you out of bed tomorrow is your faith. If any of us were to stop and consider the reality of our situation, we wouldn’t bother. And in that way, I guess, everyone who makes the effort to get up tomorrow is an optimist; that’s a great start, and we can build on that foundation.

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Are You Valuable…Or Interesting?

Written on July 8, 2010 by Jerry in customer engagement, Small Business Success, social media

I’ve been talking to a number of new bloggers the past several weeks, and it seems that they’re all getting the same advice from the experts, namely that they should focus on providing valuable content. This might come as a surprise, but I’ve told all of them to ignore that advice. Why?

Before I tell you why, let me say for the record that I’m all for valuable content. I think valuable content is great. It’s what makes a blog worth reading. It’s what makes the internet…well, valuable. But here’s the thing: whether or not you provide valuable content is entirely secondary to what really matters: whether or not you’re interesting.

That’s why I tell people to ignore the advice about valuable content, at least at the beginning. The directive to “provide valuable content” bogs down a lot of new, and even seasoned, bloggers because they end up spending all their time trying to figure out what readers will find “valuable” instead of actually writing anything. Readers can never be interested in, and never, ever find value in what never gets written.

The same is true in sales. I’ve seen salespeople who are completely obsessed with creating the perfect script to use when they make calls or deliver presentations. In fact, they get so obsessed that they never actually get around to calling, let alone making any presentations. Again, the desire to provide value gets in the way of actually delivering something valuable.

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