Happy Christmahanukwanzakah and festivus for the rest of us!

Whatever you celebrate, and however you do it, happy happy times from startup sale smentor. It has been a great year and we will continue to reflect on what we have learned, but for now, just enjoy the peace that comes this time of year. This week is for family and friends. For joy and laughter.

Monday take off the gloves and get down to business.

Sales Process – Next year, the best story wins

Sales Training alert! beep squawk beep beep, this is a sales training alert for the global sales community. This is a real emergency, do not try and change your web browser as this sales training alert is essential to your survival as a super star. Whether you are at a fortune 500, a startup tech company, or a retail outlet, the is your sales training alert.

Do you find yourself giving 40% discounts in the second week of March, in July? if the answer is yes, then by all means drop your pants next week. If not, you may find that all it did was force you to give obscene discounts no the second of January. (more…)

Success comes to those that make it

Short and sweet has been the remedy the last few weeks. Busily fighting the flu, writing the book, working with clients, entertaining holiday guests, keeping the family happy, it all interferes with blog posting and I have made it an excuse in the past.

THIS IS LAME! I realized that few weeks ago and decided to heed some of my own advice. If I want to be a successful blogger (meaning people read me, not that I plan to make any money from it), I must commit to the craft. So instad I have done what many other great blofggers have done. When I have time I write something profound, and other times I share little thoughts or snippets.

Heeding the advice of the sages of your craft is always good for the soul.  My adherance to this new plan has worked and my traffic has soared to newer heights. Thank you…um….me…for listening. You should all do it as well. If you want to succeed, go out and do something. Do not wait for a sale to ocme to you, go get it, even if it is the holiday seaason.

Time is running out, the chance to get it is going…going…(hit publish).

My man Brad is a Sales Management enabler

What exactly is Brad trying to accomplish at salesmanagement20.com?

Sure the sales role is the fastest changing role in the modern organization. Sure the sales manager has to adapt or face extinction. Sure we need help any way we can get it.

But really, did he need to develop a complete sales management 2.0 community? I mean, is he trying to trainer the sales trainer? Offer sales training ideas to those that need them most? Really who thinks we need that?

(me….good work Brad)

The thorough nature of a Sales Evangelist – sometimes it is in the minutia

First of all, this is all about fixing the RSS feed on http://salesbloggers.com. If you have not checked out the site, 9 of us in online sales training, yes welcome Will from topsalesblog.com, are spewing brilliance from different places in the sales world.  Go sign up for the feed and enjoy. Oh and the free ebook is about to come out…as soon as this darn flu passes.

Now back to the point. We have had this problem for weeks, and no offense to the SBU but they are all sales consultants and masters of sales training. This is not an insult, as I am one as well. The difference, I thrive on startups. In doing so, I am also a marketing guy, and admin assistant, a writer, a sales person, a sales manager, the CRM guy, IT, and whatever else is going to help my client get to profitability. After all my tag line is:

“I help new companies in emerging sectors make money.”

That statement is void of all sales rhetoric, thanks to the brilliance of Jill Konrath. Sometimes I roll up the sleeves and get my hands dirty. Actually most times.

So, when weeks of no RSS passed and noone had it figured out, what did I do?

1. I went to feedburner and ran a test.
2. The test told me to look at all of our php files for whitespace (about 30).
3. Turned off all of our plugins one by one to find the issue.
4. Then finally, went in to each and every file, yes all 30, and removed all of the double spacing (some moron of a coder missed that this would cause feed issues).
5. Reset everything.

Now we have a working RSS, and if anyone ever asks you the difference between the salesman and the sales evangelist… send them the permalink.