57 Days of Selling

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late

Found my jacket grabbed my hat
Made my car in seconds flat
Arrived at the office and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream

Ah,  I read the sales board today, oh boy
Four hundred copiers sold in one month
And though the copiers were kind of small
They had excellent spiffs for them all

Then, I woke up and it was the beginning of "Day 10". 

I do love those lyrics for A Day in the Life" from the Beatles, and for some reason they were on my mind on my drive to my first appointment.

I was pretty excited about this appointment because it was net new prospect, I had cold called this location a few months ago, and this would be my third appointment.

Let me back track a bit, a few weeks ago, I had stopped in for my second visit with this client.  After a few minutes I found that there was quite a bit of interest in a wide format scanner/printer.  The client tasked me with a few items to research, the first was to give the client a list of the different type of substrates that the system could print on, and the second was some full color samples. I had emailed the list of substrates a few days before, and yesterday I called and left a message that I had the samples ready and would drop them off at 9AM. In addition I added this statement to the voice mail. "if tomorrow at 9AM is not good for you, please call me, otherwise I will be there at 9AM."

I've used this message on many occasions to schedule an appointment when I believe the client is too busy too call me back.  I've even used this in the past to schedule a few on site demonstrations.  Every now and then I'll get someone who didn't like the approach, but more often than not, the prospect is ready and waiting for me.  In this case the prospect was there and acknowledged that he did get my message from yesterday.

After thirty minutes or so, an opportunity was created, the prospect wanted pricing, and I closed with. "I'll have that in a day or so and would it be ok to bring that to you next Tuesday at 9AM?" There was no way I was going to email the proposal, or leave with out setting another appointment.  Thus, I was able to kill two birds with one stone.

I arrived back at the office about 11AM, did not do any cold calls while I was out, because I'm down to the last few days of the month and I need to make things happen.  Making things happen was too follow up with all of my opportunities and to see who I could move forward to a closing appointment.

After lunch, I found out that my 4PM appointment was not going to be there.  I had the entire afternoon to figure out who is going to fish or cut bait.  Most of my opps fell into the cut bait category and I had to move them off to November.  I was able to identify five accounts that had a chance to close before the end of the month.  It's tough when you empty the pipeline in the previous quarter, you've just go to keep building prospect after prospect.

I did have one awesome call, even though this client moved the purchase time line out two additional weeks.  I was able to find out my competitors, what models they were presenting along with the costs for the hardware and maintenance/supply agreements.  I have enough ammo now that I think I have a better than average shot of closing this net new account also

From 3:30PM till 5PM, I made about 20 or so follow up calls, and developed my next list of prospects to call. End result of the day, one net new opp created and scheduled two additional appointments for next week.

BTW, I'm getting tired of this not having an order in 7 days!

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created Today= $11K

Total New Opportunities Created = $146

-=Good Selling=-

Today was a day like another other day at the Jersey Shore, the Sun still rose in the East, the ocean still sent it's countless waves ashore and I was off to work.  Dagnabit, it was such a beautiful day for October in New Jersey!

I had one early appointment at 9AM for that wide format color scanner I spoke about the other day.  Funny, how thrifty some clients can be.  The first question was centered around, "can I rent a wide format color scanners for a few months?", the second, "do you have any off lease wide format color scanners?", and "do you have anything used?"  You know my answer, right?  No, no and no, however I did explain to the client why none of those scenario's would work for them.  Did I take an order, well......no, but it wasn't because I didn't close enough, the client wanted to get with his accountant and find out what lease is better for them.  I'm hoping to have this in my pocket this week.

BTW, if you're wondering where I get my pricing for wide format scanners, take a trip to my peeps over at National Azon. They have been awesome!

Speaking of this week, I'm down to the last five selling days of the week and I got crap!  So much for the past two months, when almost every opportunity turned into an order. I've lost three already this month and I'm thinking I'm losing another one tomorrow.  So, it goes.....

With twenty-five percent of the month left, I turned my attention to trying to wrap up a few orders before the month closed.  I was able to schedule 3 appointments today with existing accounts, and worked on researching and finalizing a few orders that I can bring to fruition. 

At this point, I don't have anything solid, meaning I have an appointment or a call to write an order.  I did get notification on a large order that the down payment check of $35K did go in the mail today.  Thus, I'm hoping I'll have that before the end of this week.

I have two appointments tomorrow, did not want to schedule then like that, but it is the last week of the month and I need to make things happen. 

Opportunities today, was another zero, but I'll be back on the phone tomorrow and Wednesday and I'm sure that will change.  That's one thing that I find awesome about sales, it's that as long you keep prospecting, you never know what tomorrow will bring.  Things seem to work out that way, even after 36 years, stuff just happens!

When I finish up this blog, I'll be posting up some press releases to this site, and if it's not too late, I'm going to prepare my constant contact monthly email that I will send to 45 clients (yah, yah, I know I need to get that number up).

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created Today= $0K

Total New Opportunities Created = $135K

-=Good Selling=-

OMG, I finally arrived home about 20 minutes past mid-night from our quarterly sales dinner last night.  I'm thinking I finally fell asleep somewhere on the other side of 1AM. 

The week has finally caught up to me.  I felt drained when I woke up, and it took me the better part of an hour to get going.  I had two appointments scheduled for the day.  My first appointment was scheduled for 10:45, and sure enough the travel time from my house was about ninety minutes.

Myself and my IT Guru were scheduled to meet with the President, and the Operations Manager at a new site that they had just acquired.  Our job was to survey the new location and give recommendations and pricing for moving their network infrastructure to the new site.  In addition, we'll be making recommendations for a Firewall and BDR.  We ending up spending about an hour at the new site and then had to travel back to their existing site to complete an assessment of their existing network.  We finally finished up just short of 1PM. BTW, this account outsources $40k of full color labels every year!

My second appointment was with a net new account that is about 15 minutes from home (woohoo).  By the time I stopped for some lunch, I arrived at the appointment just in time for 3PM. 

My 3PM appointment was, well, it was crap.  Client had three existing A4 Samsung devices and their IT person was also the copier tech, or so he thought he was.  It was my best interest to end the meeting ASAP, because their would never be an opportunity here. 

On the way out, I checked in to another account that I have never called before.  I did find out that they had a fleet of ten Sharp multifunctional devices, received the name of the DM and the IT director.  Thus, that last stop of the day was a good one. No opps today, no sales, however, I've got more than 25% of the week left and next week should see some deals coming out of the pipeline and moving to the sold column.

I've written about this before and recently had an email exchange with a great P4P'er Jason over at Vision.  I shared with him my weekly schedule, hoping that it could help some of his reps.  Over the years, I learned that you need a dedicated ritual of events every week. 

If you'd like to see that, I posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums, go here to view. Thank goodness the weekend is here!

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created Today= $0K

Total New Opportunities Created = $135K

-=Good Selling=-

Twas a special night at Ruth Chris Steak House, good people, good food, xclint beverages. Looking forward to Presidents Club.

The above paragraph was written will we were finishing up dinner and waiting on some excellent desserts.

Me, I was one of those fortunate enough to hit my quarter last month, and even though I had a two hour drive home, I thoroughly enjoyed the ambience, the food, the drinks and most of all I enjoyed being amongst my peers in a setting other than work.  With hard work, determination and a tiny bit of luck I hope to make it to the next quarterly dinner in January, however, I'm dreading the trip to Pennsyltucky in the dead of winter.

This AM was set aside for telemarketing for net new business, and to tell you the truth I got side tracked by a few emails and incoming calls along with developing a proposal for a client that needed it ASAP.  Before I knew it, the clock was at 11AM and I had a Noon appointment with an existing account that was a 45 minute drive time.  I was asked by my VEEP at our sales dinner why almost every appointment is an hour away?  Short and sweet,  it's a 20 minute drive to get to the start of my territory and I could drive another 45 minutes south on the Parkway to the southern most point.  Geo wise, I probably have the most square miles out of all the reps.

My noon appointment was with an existing client that had just purchased five units, and the IT director wanted some hands on with some advanced programming.  I like these kinds of appointments because you never know what may come up during the meeting/training/programming.  Alas, no other opportunity developed, but I was happy that I was able to accommodate their needs.

I had to be back at the office for a 3:30 webinar with one of our solutions providers that showed an awesome ROI excel spreadsheet for MPS and print rules. 

Dinner was scheduled for 6PM in King of Prussia, thus I had to leave the office by 4:30PM.  Not a great day by any stretch, but I was able to develop one opportunity for a color wide format scanner. I'm putting that op in for $6k.

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $6K

Total New Opportunities Created = $141K

-=Good Selling=- 

For the rest of the blog series, I'll be posting pictures from Previous President's Club trips.  That should only increase the desire to get there this time around!

You ever have one of those days where something happens in the AM, and then the rest of the day turns to crap?  Yup, happened to me this AM.

I arrived in the office just about 8:30AM after my minor fiasco. I had an email from a current client last night stating they wanted to move forward with an A4 color system.  Thus, I needed to create the paperwork, double check lease upgrade, double check my pricing and email those documents out.  Yes, I emailed the docs because the account was more than a 90 minute ride away and I already had three appointments scheduled for the day.

My first appointment was with a net new client that's in the market for a wide format system. I left at 10AM for the 11am appointment.  I arrived on time, however my client was delayed and did not arrive until noon.  I gave it my best pitch, client is looking to purchase or lease in 4-8 weeks. I shot a couple of trial closes to him and got nothing.  He had his sights set on also speaking with two other vendors.  I presented my value statement and stated I would follow up with a call when the quotes are ready to schedule an appointment to review.  This was the first opportunity of the day, and I'm putting it in at $12k or so.

I was finished by a little after 1PM, and then had to rush to make my 2PM appointment that was more than an hour away.  I finally arrived around 2:30pm and our meeting was centered around gathering their needs for a net new placement of a wide format.  I gave my recommendations based on the clients needs and made the same arrangement for a phone call to schedule another appointment to present order docs and close.  Opportunity two is another $12k

We finished up about 3:30 and then it was off to my third appointment that was scheduled for 4PM.  I arrived to the existing account about 4:30pm, this appointment was with a 501C association to discuss his budget for next year and what the estimated maintenance & supply cost would be for their existing A3 color MFP.   When I arrived I was floored to see that the client had remodeled their entire office, and added more employees.  They had a good year, banked some cash, and my client stated, "by the way, we're looking for another color system, would you happen to have anything used (pre-owned)?"

I stated, "funny you mention that, we're delivering a new color system tomorrow and their trade-in is available.  I'm not going to get into the details for the rest of the meeting.  We ended up about 5:30pm, and it was time to get home for dinner!  Oh yeah!  Third opportunity of the day, putting this one down for $5K.

As soon as I got in my car, I checked my cell and I had a message from an existing client that they had just won a large bid and they too needed something pre-owned and want to move on it ASAP.  There's number four!  I'm also listing this one at the $5K also.  Need to touch base with them in the AM.

Thus, what was a bad day early, turned into a super day for filling the pipeline!

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $34K

Total New Opportunities Created = $135K

-=Good Selling=-

A couple of thoughts before I start day "5" for everyone.  In reference to the opportunities that I've created.  These are opps that have been created since from the start of this blog, in addition these are opportunities that I think have a 50/50 shot of closing my the end of my year. 

When I started the this collection of blogs,  I had about $125K in the pipeline for the end of the year and nearly zero for this month.  The reason for the zero this month is because I emptied my 30 day pipeline in the last quarter.

Here's what I figure I need to hit my $200K;

• $600K in the pipeline till the end of the year
• Develop an opportunity a day
• Prospecting everyday
• 8-10 appointments per week
• Research the crap out of my CRM looking for potential opps

For me, it's not a 57 day horse race to the finish, it's more like the tortoise, have a plan, stick to the plan, work hard everyday and good things will happen.  As I've stated before, the hardier you work the luckier you get (Thanx to Jack C for telling me that years ago).

Between updating my CRM, sending emails, answering emails, researching my CRM, getting lease updates, scheduling one new appointment, one new demo, and completing about ten calls.  All of this pretty much took me up to about noon today.

I had a 1PM appointment that was a one hour drive time.  That appointment was with a long time C501 account.  They purchased PPDM software from me and asked if I could help with the install.  I had no problem with scheduling with them for a few reasons.  The first is because I had not seen them in a few years (did talk and email during that time period) and the second reason is that they have an older A3 90ppm black MFP and a A3 color laser printer.  They had purchased both units about 8 years ago.  Thus, I knew the time was now to pitch something new, but in order to make that work I needed to know more about current volume, workflow and costs.

The appointment lasted a little more than two hours, however I left with another opportunity developed that has a 50/50 shot for closing by the end of the month. I also developed a plan to help them with some fundraising in the near future.  My plan?  It's simple and two fold, for every copier I sell from now until the end of the year, I'm giving that client a book of 5 raffle tickets.  Each client will have the chance to win up to $10K.  I'm figuring this is nice incentive that can help me close deals, in addition I an raise some cash for the 501C, which could put me in a good position to close and order for a new 80ppm color device.

I finally got back on the road about 3:30PM, there was a few accounts that I wanted to stop in to see on the way home (since home was almost 90 minutes away). After a few wrong turns, I was able to stop at two net new prospects.  Nothing to report with those, but it's more about staying in front of them at this point in time.

I've got three appointments tomorrow, I need to start closing a few of these!

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $22K

Total New Opportunities Created = $101K

-=Good Selling=-

What a night it was last night.  The Giants vs the Packers or Trump vs Clinton, after watching 15 minutes of the Giant vs the Packers I switched to Trump vs Clinton.  I tell you, Trump vs Clinton was a whole heck of a lot more entertaining than the Giants game!

Arrggg, Monday mornings, I hate em, you hate em, we all hate them.  I think I finally feel asleep some where around mid-night, thus I had a hard time getting this old bag o bones moving in the  AM.

I had a 9AM appointment with an existing account that had a month left on their lease. The have a 25PPM MFP with color scan, and after 15 minutes or so we agreed that the proposal for the new system should include all of the features on the last system.  No need for color or any solutions.  I did throw in a paper tray lock in order to move the process along. Should have an answer on this upgrade in a week or so, since that is the next time the board meets.

I was back at the office around 11AM and had many issues to clean up, for starters I messed up an order from last month. Well, the client thinks I did, me thinks the client somehow had a memory lapse. I took care of it asap, thus I could move on to some prospecting.

Between the emails, answering the phone, I only had enough time to log about 12 calls, however I was able to schedule two appointments for next (since this week is booked) week.  In addition I was able to garner three additional opportunities. First opp was for a small A4 mon, the second was a wide format color and A3 color MFP, the last opp was from my first appointment. 

I spent a lot of developing the numbers for the second opp wit the color wide format and the A3 color device.  This is for an existing account and the last time I presented and ROI spreadsheet, the client asked, "why would I not do this?".

Thus, I put a few hours into laying out the clients existing costs vs proposed costs.  Hoping when we meet next week, we' have the same outcome from a few years ago.

Tomorrow morning is dedicated to more phone prospecting in the AM. I have client visit at 1PM about and hour away.  After that, I plan on doing some strategic cold calls for net new.

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $27K

Total New Opportunities Created = $79K

-=Good Selling=

What a night it was at The Cannata Awards Dinner!  I found my-self calling it a night early because I had two appointments on Friday.  My first stop was at a new account in Princeton, thus I had to l leave two hours available to fight the New Jersey traffic.  Left the Westminster Hotel at 8AM, and arrived at my net new prospect just a few minutes before 10AM.  It's always good to be on time.

My first appointment with this prospect was back in late May of this year.  This net new and new business was in the need for a color multifunctional device.  I only knew about the new business bit when we first met. The gatekeeper was tasked with finding the right vendors, receive pricing and then make recommendations to the CEO.  In early June, I was able to secure and approval with out a PG (PM me for details can't post them here), and posted this prospect as an opportunity to close in June.  June came and past and nothing, I later found out that the prospect was going to hold off some since they did not have all of the employee's hired and thought the system was not needed at this time.  Each month I would call and follow up, then just a week ago the gatekeeper reached out to me to say that they were ready to order and wanted to meet to review the pricing.

Our meeting went well, the CEO was not there to sign, thus I left the paperwork and stated I could return later in the day to pick that paperwork up. I stated I would call after my last appointment. 

That meeting took almost and hour, and since I my next appointment was at 3PM, I thought it would be best to head back to the office to log a few more calls.  The ride back was about an hour, that put me at noon.  I took my entire hour for lunch and resumed catching up on a few phone calls and answering a few email.  Before I new it, the time was 2:15 and it was time to leave for my next call with an existing account that has about 5 months of payments on a 36 month lease. 

My first appointment for this account was about three weeks ago.  Our client was having some pain with the annual color pages being at almost 250,000 and they were expecting another increase of 10-20% in the next calendar year.  When a client already has two 80 ppm color devices, it drives the question of where do you go from here? I had a few ideas, one was to take and existing 80 ppm color device and move that to black only, and drive all of the color pages to either a light production color or a production system.  After 30 minutes of posing additional questions about workflow, compliance issues, and knowledge of their existing marketing people, I realized that my initial plan would not fly.

In additional there were no other options. I thought it would be best to "let the ball travel", because there were only five payments left on the lease and I knew that the new MP C8003's are just on the horizon.  Both the client and I agreed that we would meet again in 30 days to review color volume, review features and specs of MP C8003 as long as the system was released.  I also made it clear that we are approaching our end of year and I would we could both benefit of upgrading the current lease before the end of this year.  Thus, an opportunity was created for $40k that would close before the end of this year.

By the time I walked out it was 4PM and I turned my attention the meeting  I had this AM.  I accessed my phone as I arrived to my call and there was an email from that net new prospect that started with, "I'm sorry".  Geesh, WTF I thought!  I finished reading the email to find out that my gatekeeper also had to run the order past here CFO.  My gatekeeper explained that she had met a copier rep in the last week, and was also going to get a price from them.  Easy come, easy go, right?  I sent my gatekeeper stating thank you and also stated that we are not going to be the cheapest price and you can't get the lowest price and have excellent support.  I sent that email a little after 4PM, and had no response till the end of the day.  Figure I will attack this on Monday AM.  I had decent GP, now I gotta rack my brain for some ideas for Monday.

Earlier in the day, I thought this was a sure thing, and now it's not. I'm hoping I can get this back to a sure thing Monday AM.

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $40K

Total New Opportunities Created = $52K

-=Good Selling=-

Wednesday night saw me catching the last few innings of the Mets vs the Giants, alas I will have to wait till next season since the Mets were shut out by the Giants.

Since I hit the sack so late, I found myself up a little past 6AM, finally arrived to the office just a little after 8AM.  I had scheduled to be in the office all day because we had a call block scheduled for 12:45 that would last until 3:30PM.

Starting at 3:45 we had a monthly sales meeting for all of the branches via our Ricoh teleconference system.

Prior to lunch I was able to complete two ROI based worksheets for two different existing accounts.  These work sheets included the current cost annual cost for the the leased hardware and the last twelve months of billing for maintenance and supplies.  I also develop and additional work sheet that will lay out the proposed annual lease cost and the new maintenance and supply costs.  Thus I can show my client the before and after along with any changes in quarterly or annual page volumes that I recommend.  

I also spent time on returning emails from Admin, clients, and answered questions that were posed to me from the rookie sales people in the office.

After lunch it was Call Time.  My call time was directed towards setting appointments for net new customers, but I also found the time to catch some existing clients.  I ended up making about 37 calls, scheduled 6 appointments with three of those appointments being net new.  Boy are those net news tough to schedule.  But, I was determined to get it done, I gotta hit the number thus I was leaving no stone un-turned.

My day was not over after our sales meeting, because I was also scheduled to attend The Cannata Awards and Charity Dinner in North Jersey.   

A little before 6PM I arrived at the Westminster Hotel in Livingston, checked in, freshened up and was off to the two hour ****tail party.  If you ever want to see the who's who of our industry, then you need to attend The Cannata Dinner.

I chatted with many old friends, made some new friends and had one funny moment while I was getting a ginger ale.  A women turned to me and asked what I was drinking, I stated Ginger Ale, she then ordered the drink for me and turned to me , handed me my drink and asked, "so who are you"?  She then looked at my name tag and stated OMG, it's Art!  In turn I did not realize the woman was Tanya Flores from ESP.  We've spoken many times over the phone in the past year since ESP is an advertiser for the P4P Hotel.  We hadn't seen each other in about three years.  

I'd like to thank Muratec for inviting me again this year, special thanx to Jim & Lou!  

If you have the time, you need to check out the Muratec Label Press, this system can make you a ton of cash and it's got sizzle.  We all know Sizzle sells!

It's about 11:30PM now and it's time to turn in, I've got two appointments tomorrow, one of them may turn out to be a closing appointment, my second appointment is to present my recommendation for one of my clients that have pushed their color volume to more than 25K per month.

Amount Sold Today = 0

Total Revenue to Date = $2K

New Opportunities Created = $12K

-=Good Selling=-

Had a bit of extra time this AM, since my first appointment was at 9AM.  No sense in leaving the house at 7AM to get to the office at 8AM and then travel an hour to my 9AM appointment.

I scheduled the 9AM appointment (net new) last week, it was more of a follow up appointment to make sure I'm in play for 100 plus units.  Still many months away, but I already know the players, it's gonna be tough to knock out the incumbent. Appointment went well, I squeezed some additional info out of them.  Looking forward to nailing this one!

My second appointment was scheduled for 10:30AM.  Client (net new) has existing Xerox equipment, however I'm trying to get in the back door with a color wide format device.  After 20 minutes or so we were done, I need to provide different types of substrates that our color MFP plotter can use, in addition a few sample prints. Thus, I'm counting this as a $9K opportunity!  

Put it in the pipeline baby!

At 11:30AM,  I had scheduled a telechat with another account, however I had to cancel because my cell battery was not charged enough.  That's on me, I was able to find a free wi-fi and alerted my contact via Linkedin.  All is good.

Next stop was the office (one hour ride), I had some follow ups, needed to schedule some appointments. I ended up scheduling 4 appointments, three with existing clients and one net new.  In addition I took an order from an existing client for two PSIII cards.  That was a quick $2k in revenue. 

No lunch, too busy, had to leave the office at 2:30PM for a 3:30PM  appointment with an existing account.  With this appointment I was also bringing my content guru with me.  We arrived right on time,  and before we went in or the meeting, I told my content guru that this was going to more about content, not IT.  So, gather up one of our vertical market content stories and be ready to pitch.  One other item, I told my guru that this appointment was set due to a covenant that I had included in the sale of 4 system to them a few weeks ago.  I gave up some GP in order for them to agree to the content meeting.  

After 15 minutes, we found out there is no need for content, they've got everything nailed down with scanning, archiving, and bar codes that's driving all of that data back to their business line of software.  I than asked, "what's the one process  that you dread doing everyday", she stated, "well that's a loaded question."  We did not expect this, but she stated was their internal IT person, and also working with an  outside IT company for all of the companies needs.

We were then told that they make make a change at the end of this year or earlier.  BANG, another opportunity! We finished up a little after 4PM, and it was time to head home since I would never make it back to the office before 5PM.  Not a shabby day.

Opportunity created net new appt=$9K

Opportunity created existing from phone call=$25k

Amount Sold Today = $2K 

Total Revenue = $2K

-=Good  Selling=-

Just about two years ago, I posted up a blog titled the 12 Days of Selling (for some reason I can't find 7 & 8) which was based on the last 12 selling days of the year in 2014. 

Each day, I would post up my sales journal of the days events, and then keep a running total of what I needed for the end of the selling year.

Thus, I thought I would not put as much pressure on my-self (lol), and start my sales journal earlier this year. Each selling day I will post a blog my days activities along with some entertaining events that will take place.   I may even add a few days, who says you can't work on Saturday or Sunday?

I'm putting my goal @ $200,000 in revenue, I really don't need that much, but when you've got to set your goals higher because there will be deals that the bean counters will knock down and some will get pumped.  I figure a $20K cushion will ice it.  However, I have a problem, I pretty much blew my pipeline in the last quarter and I really don't have much in the pipeline for the end of the year. It should prove to be interesting

I want to write this for two reasons, one for all of those newbies out there, hoping that they may be able to get something from an old dog that is always learning new tactics to work with the old tactics. 

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with someone in the industry and he stated  that new reps are not being taught how to be a "salesperson" and the generation that I'm from (give or take 10 years), maybe the "The Last Copier Salespeople" in our business.  I just may have to agree with him.  Thus, I'm hoping what I've learned over the last 36 years can help someone.

My second reason is personal goal.  I want to be the top dog on the team, I want to show the team that an old dog like me can still bring in numbers and that I still have the same passion and drive for the industry that I had thirty years ago. Lastly, I want to spend 7 days with my wife in the Caribbean during the first week of March in 2017 (I hate March in New Jersey).

Some of the blog posts may be short, but I'll try to keep them packed with tidbits of selling stuff for everyone. 

Amount Sold = $0

-=Good Selling=-