The Winner's Sales Strategy Blog

Successful people listen to new ideas

I'll start this post with one of my favorite Napoleon Hill quotes: "Once you've closed yourself off to new ideas, you've ceased to grow."

My last couple of posts have sparked a barrage of angry (and sometimes profane) emails from the cold calling people. As usual, there was no logic and they refused to provide any contact info or even a valid reply-to email address. What these people don't seem to understand is that the most successful people in history owe a lot of their success to the fact that they always remained open and receptive to new ideas.

When I receive an email to the effect of "you are wrong, cold calling is the only way, you don't know what you're talking about, you are a liar," I realize that I'm hearing from a person who will never rise above mediocrity simply because he or she is closed off to new ideas, and as Napoleon Hill said, that person has ceased to grow.

I always remain open to new ideas, and as a result, I've achieved great success and am financially free. For example, I always shunned the insurance business, but my largest income producer right now is an insurance agency I own. Surprised? Everyone assumes my largest business is as an author, but that takes 2nd place to insurance. You'll be pleasantly surprised a lot if you remain open to new ideas instead of closing yourself off from them. If I was not open to new ideas, I would not have considered the opportunity to go into the insurance business last year, and my income would be half of what it is today.

(By the way, there is no cold calling in my insurance agency. We generate leads for the agents using my 'never cold call again' systems. As a result, many agents are making over $20k/month without cold calling. That's the power of accepting and trying out new ideas.)

How much money are you losing by depriving yourself of new ideas? How much better could the cold calling people live if they just opened up their minds to a few new ideas? Always keep that thought in mind when you're faced with new ideas that may seem disagreeable at first. By doing so, you might stumble upon the "million-dollar idea" that you've been searching for all your life. I did. Twice. And there are many more to come!

The cold calling advocates speak again

I'm going through emails from the contact form at my Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time site. I have a few here from cold calling proponents who make stupid irrational arguments in favor of cold calling and, as usual, do not include their email addresses, names, or other contact information. Here is an example of the typical email I receive insisting that cold calling works (yes, this is a real email):

"If cold calling doesn't work then you are doing it wrong. Cold calling is second only to referral based business in the market."

Really? Where are the statistics to prove this? What market are you referring to? And if cold calling doesn't work due to people doing it wrong, what's the right way to cold call? As usual, this email contains no information to support the argument that cold calling works. And no reply address was included because this person is probably some sales manager who knows very well that cold calling doesn't work, but continues to order his/her salespeople to do it anyway.

I bring this up because out of the hundreds upon hundreds of emails I receive from people who insist that cold calling works, not one has ever included any intelligent arguments or facts to back that claim. NOT ONE. My point is simply that cold calling doesn't work for anyone. If even one of these people had gotten good results from cold calling, then they'd have solid proof to back it up. As usual, they don't, and they're too cowardly to even include a reply address.

Hiring and Keeping Top Producers

I came across an article somewhere that actually recommended against hiring top performers because they are supposedly "unmanageable." Here is my reply to that ridiculous suggestion:

I think it's very important for sales managers to realize that superstar salespeople are extremely entrepreneurial, which of course is what makes them superstars. An employee mentality is very limiting in sales and the top producers are those who work like independent consultants, not like employees.

The problem is that most companies want to treat top producers like employees and this is where the conflicts of interest begin. A friend of mine (he and I now own an insurance agency together) and I worked together for a couple of years. We were both top producers and we both routinely quit jobs that brought us in for our track records but then wanted us to do things "their way" such as requiring us to cold call. The problem is that we didn't become star producers by doing things their way. We did it our way and it worked. The very best years I had in sales were working for companies that did not bother with sales plans, meetings, and forecasts (namely Sprint and Lucent Technologies in Las Vegas.) We were all treated like independent consultants and as a result I was able to work like one and produce fabulous results, albeit on my terms.

In all my sales experience, and in business in general, one of the biggest causes of failure for managers is an inability to delegate. The reason I have done so well in the past few years as the owner of a few businesses is that I love to delegate. Most sales managers are completely unable to delegate. They don't realize that hiring a top producer is the equivalent of hiring an independent consultant. For example, I pay the firm that handles the marketing campaigns for my websites without trying to micro-manage them or otherwise probe into what they're doing. I pay them because they're better at it than me, and for that reason they are free to do as they see fit. The same rule must be applied to superstar salespeople or the whole plan will backfire.