You can hardly turn on the TV these days without hearing some ‘gloom and doom' story about the economy, government bailouts, foreclosures, governor mishaps, and an assorted array of conflicts from around the world. Stop the bus! It's time to get off.

The worst part about the constant flow of bad news is that it tends to seep its way into our persona, and the way we feel about things. With bad news all around us, you wake up in the morning, and already have a negative sense of things. This is not good for the entrepreneurial spirit at all. My recommendation? Turn off the TV!

Go find something else to watch, or read a book that boosts your spirits instead of reinforcing the negative senses. You must have some DVD movie or TV program that will make you laugh. Remember Seinfeld?

The mind is a tape recorder. What you put into your mind is what you get out. After a prolonged period of negative input all that comes out will be negative.

Prospects see this! If you're giving off a negative aura, you'll feed your prospect's negative input receptors. Engage in negative behavior, and before long, both you and your prospect are seeing things in a negative light. Not a very good way to close a deal!

Keep in mind the ‘Garbage in-Garbage out' rule of thumb. Be careful what your absorbing into your way of thinking, and how you see the world around you. Lighten up! Turn off that TV, and do something to lift your spirits. Your family, friends, and sales prospects are depending on you to help them out of the doldrums.

It comes down to potluck as to whether you get a cooperative admin on the phone, or one that is simply out to get you. You never know until you make the call! That’s sales! 

Personally, I don’t think that most admins are worth the effort it takes to try and wear down their resistance to putting your call through to their boss. I often find myself telling the admin that I must have the wrong number, or that I’ll call the boss on his cell phone later in the day when they start asking too many questions. Better to try my luck again later, and get the boss on the phone live.

On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to ask a few probing questions of secretaries if you want to find out whether your competitor has a foothold in the account, or whatever. It’s a coin toss as to which path I go down. One thing is for certain. When admins start asking too many questions, it’s usually a good sign that your call won’t get put through. Game over!

How about you? How do you play the game, and respond when the admin screen starts asking 20-questions about spelling your last name, where you’re calling from, and what your call is in reference to?  

With sales prospecting, the dartboard of sales has the same prerequisite as with throwing darts at a dartboard. First, salespeople must establish the target by knowing something more about their target prospect before they throw a dart, and make a sales call.  Many salespeople do not approach the dartboard of sales in this fashion. For some reason they opt for putting on a blindfold, and make their sales calls without the benefit of information, and simply hope for the best. Their sales calls are darts that rarely hit their intended target.A recent campaign I did for a client got me to thinking. The product I am representing on their behalf is quite complex, and is difficult to explain. To make matters worse, the product becomes even more difficult to explain when I find myself speaking to the wrong person. I just never know. Someone’s job title by itself doesn’t tell me anything beforehand about the prospect being qualified enough to call. I simply have to call and find out. Having suffered through this exercise for a time, I saw the value of searching for more detailed information about my sales prospect before throwing any darts, and making sales calls.

Here’s a sales hunting tip!

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Google by now. But did you know that if you search Google, (or any other search engine), that you can get very good background information about your prospect in advance, and spare yourself the time and frustration of making sales calls without any information, like wearing a blindfold? Many decision-makers make news on the Internet for a variety of reasons. Maybe they were cited for a promotion, or had a 73rd place finish in a 10 K mini-marathon where the live.  Search engines generally pick up news about volunteer work, or any other philanthropic activities. You can find out all you want about your sales prospects with ease if you know how to search for it via the Internet, and through networking websites like LinkedIn. Now that I’m finding more background information there’s less guesswork involved with calling sales prospects. I threw the blindfold away. 

Happy Hunting…