Its been a while since I have gone on Millerianesque rant. Frankly, I was not sure there was another one in me. Well, I was wrong. See, I am sick and tired of people thinking that all you have to do is throw some slick new tools into the mix and VIOLA you have a Sales 2.0 strategy.

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“With Genius Marketing we are able to easily and instantly connect with our most valuable customers and offer them important services during  the economic downturn. It’s paying off for both BT and our customers.” – Russell Cartwright | Manager of BT Business Sales Enablement

You know how much I love starting a message with a customer quote. This one is no different as Genius provided me with this gem and I am happy to share. If you are a long time reader you know I love the Genius suite of products and have talked about them fondly. If you are new, please read more about how they empower sales messaging via email. Click on that sentence back there to read.

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Some great data for benchmarking and anlysis.

Talked about getting beyond the lead and into the meat of the sales.

Top priorities for Sales Leaders:

1. Enhance and increase Lead Generation 71% of these have frozen or reduced budgets and 84% have higher revenue goals

Instead, how do you generate opportunities.

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So my last sales message, sales preach, sales training, whatever you want to call it. My last delivery on the typical sales trainer and their myriad of suggestions on how to illicit information while sharing little. My diatribe on how you need to deliver especially when evangelizing the new, now must be tempered. The hand of discipline that thrusts down with vigor is called PREPARATION!

If you want to explain the value of what you offer, then invest as much time in crafting that message as you do in finding people to share it with. This will be a short post, and one that is right to the point. Why? I have read and reread this post aloud. To my daughter in an effort to make her chuckle. To myself in an effort to edit and heighten the message. If you are not getting the message at this point, then no love lost, but move on, I do not think you are ready to be my customer.

Every sales training I have every been a party to attending focused predominately on the right questions to ask and how to build strategies around the answers. Whether it is how to avoid objections, understand objectives, learn processes, they just assume that people will want to talk to you once you get them on the phone. Sales trainer after sales trainer seem to have yet another clever way to get people to open up and share with you without you sharing much with them.

No offense to my colleagues and cohorts in sales education, but what a crock! We preach this stuff, but everyone of us has crafted an amazong entry statement, several two sentence case studies, and several value statements that carry the weight of our reputation on them. When we place a call, or meet someone at an event we share this with them. Example one:

“I help startups in emerging sectors get to revenue generation.”

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