Someone once said that worrying is praying for things you don’t want to happen.  What a great saying, and, like all sayings, there’s a lot of truth in it.  When you think about it, praying is when you concentrate on one thing and then you meditate or "pray" on it to the exclusion of all [...]

Have you ever sat at your desk, shuffled your leads, looked at the clock thinking that lunchtime was way too far off, and then prayed for the phone lines to go dead?  Has the phone ever seemed like a 500-pound weight?  If so, then you know what call reluctance is.
Before I became a Top [...]

If you?re in a selling situation where you get to call back leads that have expressed an interest in your product or service, then consider yourself lucky. Whether they come from traditional advertising sources or from the internet, inbound leads save you the time, effort ? and often the terror! ? of cold calling. While [...]

I don?t know about you but I can always tell when a telemarketer is cold calling me. From the moment they begin speaking, ?Hi is that Mr. Brooks?? to the way they fumble through their scripts, I have them pegged before they get past their first sentence. And like I?m sure it is with you, [...]

For the past 26 years I?ve worked on the phones as a qualifier, broker, sales associate, sales manager, director of sales, V.P. of sales, owner of various inside sales companies, consultant ? you get the idea.
I?ve worked with, monitored and heard thousands of sales reps over the years, and I?ve heard it all ? the [...]

I hear over and over again how important the first few seconds of a phone call are to make a connection and grab interest, and my question to you is — are you still opening your calls with the standard, “How are you today?”  If so, then you’ve just turned off about half of your [...]

First of all, did you know that you are talking to yourself all day long? (You’re thinking, “Do I talk to myself? What does he mean, talk to myself? I don’t talk to myself!”) Psychologists estimate that you are talking to yourself at a rate of 1,200 to 1,500 words a minute (in contrast, when [...]

Ahhhhh…..  The NFL.  The start of the season is looming near.  I read a piece by Peter King from SI.com about his conversation with Ellis Hobbs – former cornerback with the New England Patriots.  He was talking about how much respect he had for head coach Bill Belichick.
He said, “Early in my career, Bill called [...]

First, for those of you who have seen me live, you know that I am big on questioning your prospects during the qualification stage. As I’ve said – your prospects have all the answers as to why they will buy or not buy, and it is your job to get them to reveal this [...]

Because you only have a few precious seconds to make a connection and establish interest, you’d better have a good opening prepared in advance. Besides being very busy, your prospects probably get a lot of sales calls every week, and many of them from your direct competition. So why would they want to talk to [...]