For those of you who follow the ups and downs, ins and outs of the sales training industry, here is the latest, as of today, April 1, 2009:

• Miller Heiman and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller have announced a merger.  The new business, to be called Herman Miller Heiman, will be offering a new, upgraded version of their highly popular Aeron chair.  It will be called The Silver Bullet™. Preliminary tests show that within two minutes of  a salesperson sitting in the chair (seen on the right), the phone starts ringing with people wanting to buy whatever they are selling, immediately, at any price.  An HMH spokesperson called the new chair, “The Silver Bullet that sales people have been waiting for.”
  

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• Huthwaite, Inc. has announced a new program called S.P.I.N. Stalling. Originally developed with cooperation of Procrastinators International, program participants will learn about the psychology of stalling and how best to strong-arm a reluctant customer into buying something—anything!  By the way, the 25-year-old Procrastinators International has still not scheduled their first membership meeting.
  

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• The TAS Group revealed this week that they have expanded their vision of the role technology will play in sales effectiveness and have decided to acquire Garmin, GE, and The Gap.  York Baur, The TAS Group’s CMO said, “We’re taking anytime, anywhere learning to the next logical level.  You’ll be able to get our content, learning, coaching as well as instant guidance on your deals directly, without a computer or PDA, from your Nüvi, your toaster and even your jeans.”  Baur continues, “By 2011 we’ll be licensing a TAS-chip which will be implanted just behind the left ear in a painless three-minute procedure.”   The TAS Group is negotiating with Seattle’s SEA-TAC airport to have its distance-learning video clips play 24/7 on televisions throughout the airport.
  

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• Selling to Big Companies author Jill Konrath told us she is increasing her productivity level for the remainder of 2009.  Each and every week she will be delivering five webinars, four videos, three white papers, two blog posts and a book for all of us to read.
  

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• The U.S. Congress is about to commence an investigation of why dozens of randomly selected sales trainers all have the same companies listed as references on their websites.  The CEOs from Oracle, Dell, IBM, Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Sun, and other technology companies are expected to testify next week as to who their sales training partners really are.
  

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• After almost a century of heated debate, two age-old questions have finally been answered unequivocally, once and for all:  “Are salespeople are born or made?” and, “Is sales art or science?”  Now we can move on to other questions such as, is cold-calling dead?
  

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• Fifty-three purchasing agents from New York City-based multinationals have been granted licenses to carry assault rifles.  They had claimed that during the current economic crisis, sales reps from New York have been even more threatening than before.  Mr. Blake, the New York chapter representative from SPA—the Sales Professionals of America—was outraged.  “If those #^%!@# buyers think they can threaten our &%$@#@$ members with AK-47’s and !#¢Æ§  Uzi’s, they can @!(*(*&@#.  And the horse they rode in on.”
  

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• Sales legend Rick Page was overheard in the Hartsfield airport in Atlanta saying,  “I really do hope I catch my flight.”
  

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• The next release of Salesforce.com will include an interface to activity sensor mini-applications on salesreps’ computers. If the salesrep is active on their computer but does not update the required data, Salesforce.com blocks access to MySpace.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, Ebay.com, Zillo.com, Meebo.com, Friendster.com, Orkut.com,  AdultFriendFinder.com, and Zappos.com  for 30 days.  Russian hackers are already selling software to bypass the restriction.
  

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• LinkedIn estimates that the number of sales-related groups on their site will top 1,000 by mid-year.  That will be close to one-half the number of sales-related blogs ESR expects to be live by that time.
  

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• In Silicon Valley, more than 10,000 out-of-work salespeople  paid $100 each to download a document entitled One Hundred Foolproof Ways to Hide Gaps in Your Resume. Another site was discovered last week already boasting 12,000 downloads of, How to Enlist Estranged Family Members As References.  You may remember that just one year ago today the video, How to Forge a W-2 and Other Income Verification Documentation surfaced on YouTube.  There have been more than one millions views.
  

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• With promotional webinar attendance down in 2009, WebEx is recommending that companies prospecting for customers pay them for attending the one-hour webinars.  A senior executive at WebEx said, “If you pay them, they will come.”
  

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• Following a number of snarking incidents Robin Fray Carey of SocialMediaToday.com has decided to change the name of The Customer Collective to the more appropriate The Customer Invective.
  

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• Well-respected, prolific, and seriously dapper UK sales top sales expert Jonathan Farrington has some explaining to do.  He recently dropped his signature eyeglasses whilst at London’s Heathrow airport, Terminal 1.  Coincidentally, a local ophthalmologist happened to be standing there, recovered the glasses and, after a moment’s inspection, noted that the lenses were, in fact, clear glass.
  

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• The Harvard and Stanford Business Schools announced today that they will be offering fully accredited Masters of Professional Selling degrees beginning in 2012.  Harvard’s Chancellor I. Kangettitforu Holsael said, “We’re thirty years behind the times.  With more than 7 million salespeople in the U.S. alone, and sales productivity at an all time low, we are taking a bold step.  We want our B-school to be relevant to the business community. Sales is not marketing.  It finally needs to be respected and supported.”
  

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• Immediately following the Obama administration’s announcement this morning of an investigation of plagiarism and pirating among sales trainers, as many as thirty popular sales tips websites were taken down, with “Under Construction” showing up on home pages.
  

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• A recent survey of eBay sales shows that a sales training shingle can be purchased for as little as $3.00.  Clever names for new sales approaches have leveled off at $1.03.  Names using acronyms are going for a dollar more.
  

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• Responding to the financial crisis, IBM issued new guidelines.  Their coveted top performer sales award club will be held at the Admiral’s Club at O’Hare airport later this month.  Each attendee will be given a voucher for a meal at the food court.  Tickets for short-term parking will be validated.
  

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• Social media advocate Axel Schultze announced today that he is upgrading his dial-up modem. “Present technology supports considerably faster communication.  1200 baud just doesn’t do it for me.  I know if I move to 9600 baud, everyone will quickly follow.”  You may remember that Axel was in the news last month after having convinced senior executives at Wal-Mart to have all their in-store sales associates spend 50% of their time at work on Twitter to prospect for additional business.
  

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• The interest around Sales 2.0 is expected to continue gather momentum.  The term has proved to be such a money maker for some, that Chrysler, who owns the Jeep brand, is making a Sales 2.0 model of their venerable Wrangler, in an attempt to duplicate the success of their Eddie Bauer model.  Celebrity Cruise lines is even considering a four week “Sales 2.0 Cruise to Nowhere.”
  

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Thanks to Jonathan Farrington for his early opinion this post, with his real glasses.
My sincere respect and appreciation for many Sales 2.0 vendors and, especially, Nigel Edelshein.
Photo credit:  Herman Miller Heiman

I’ve been sick in bed with a nasty virus.  I’ve got a bit of pneumonia as a dividend.  I guess I can’t expect real dividends these days.  Compared to many in the world, I’m lucky.  But, I feel pretty short-tempered and was in no mood for my wonderful Dell 620 to be taken over by some malware.

It happened yesterday.  I must have OK’ed the changes to the registry when prompted by McAfee, although I certainly don’t remember having done so.  But then again, if you saw the pharmacy on my night table, you’d understand my confusion.

Although a McAfee scan showed nothing, the one on Microsoft’s site delivered the bad news.  Serious problems that couldn’t be resolved.  Apparently Internet Explorer (I use Firefox) had been hijacked.  Certain functions, like going to Microsoft’s site to check on Windows update status brought me elsewhere.  Fake diagnostics were running on my system through Firefox.  Lots of disk hashing.  Funny Microsoft warning dialog boxes popping up with links that went to scary websites. I had to think carefully.  Was it the drugs?  I concluded that it wasn’t.

Here’s what I did:

1. I looked at the most recent Norton Ghost mirror image of my Dell laptop’s hard drive.  We use a combination of three Maxtor backup hard drives for daily backups (we backup off-site as well), and Ghost hard drive image backups.  Sorry, big company IT folks.  We’re on the small size at ESR.  This took 5 minutes.
2. I learned that Jan 4th was the latest for the image backup.  My laptop had been out of the docking station since I had been sick starting that evening.  No worries.  I had a solid image backup.
3. All the datafiles were backed up yesterday.  Good news.  Took 2 minutes to check that.
4. I backed up all the data files again to get this mornings emails onto the backup.  We have a quick command to do that.  It took 5 minutes at most.  That included taking the pill for “Day #4″ in my Z-Pack.
5. I restored my laptop to Jan 4 using Ghost.  You boot off a restore CD and Ghost copies the image from the backup Maxtor to my hard disk, wiping away everything that was there, including the malware.  I like the sound of that.  The restore took just an hour.  I used the time to breathe some steam, do the inhaler thing, take another pill and catch my breath, of which I apparently have very little these days.
6. I copied all the last 24 hour’s data files (Outlook, documents, photos, MP3’s) back onto the newly restored laptop.  That took less than 5 minutes.

Last year my heard drive crashed on the same Dell laptop.  I received the new one the next day.  That time, I was up and running in 90 minutes. That Norton Ghost.  Worth every penny.  Plus Peter Norton owns a nice house here on Martha’s Vineyard.  He’s not here very much, though.  Certainly not in the winter.  They say there are ghosts in his house.  Nice branding effort, Peter!

So there’s the magic formula to prevent disaster and days/weeks/thousands of wasted time and money.  Get Norton Ghost, a backup hard drive, some backup routines and a bit of discipline.  Works for me.

Now, can you tell me how I can get better so I can get out of bed and back to work?

Photo credit: © kentoh – Fotolia.com

When people find out I’m a pilot, some invariably ask, “Could you land a jetliner if something happened to the pilot?”  I’ll answer that shortly.

You might think that such a sitation never arises.  But it does.  Claire McBride sent me this article just a few minutes ago, Pilot sought help of passengers to land jet, from yesterday’s Irish Times.

In February 2002, Ronald Crews, a Cape Air pilot, suffered a low blood-sugar episode in the middle of a 15-minute evening flight from Martha’s Vineyard to Hyannis.  I should mention that there is only one pilot on Cape Air flights.  According to the Cape Cod Times,

Crews ignored a flashing red light and beeping alarm on board the twin-engine Cessna he was flying. Soon, the plane jerked side to side and up and down, according to court papers. When Crews passed Hyannis pointed toward the open ocean, the four panicked passengers asked him where he was going.

One of the four others on board was Melanie Oswalt, a Cape Air security supervisor who, as a pilot-in-training, had just 48 hours of flying experience. She called Cape Air on her cell phone but lost the signal. She moved to the co-pilot’s chair to help, but Crews pushed her aside, court papers said.

Oswalt told the three businessmen on board that she was a student pilot and the only way they could land safely was to restrain Crews, who was incoherent, and fly to Provincetown Airport. Two male passengers grabbed Crews’ neck and arms, subduing the pilot, court papers said.

The Provincetown Airport was closed, and no one was on the ground to assist Oswalt. The Cessna’s landing gear hadn’t lowered. Still, she skidded the plane down safely on its belly on a grassy strip next to the runway. 

…In U.S. District Court in Boston, Crews was sentenced to 16 months in prison and two years supervised release for lying to the government about the diabetes that caused his in-flight collapse, according to federal prosecutors.

I fly Cape Air regularly from Martha’s Vineyard to Boston.  I always tell the other passengers that I’m a pilot and would like to sit in the co-pilot’s seat.  Needless to say, they are delighted with that idea.  Could I land that plane?  Sure.  But that’s no Boeing 747-400. 

On a related subject, did you know that in July 1983 a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran completely out of fuel at 41,000 feet?   The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba. 

None of the 61 passengers were seriously hurt during the landing.

Before September 11, I would ask for and almost always be given permission to sit in the jump seat on the flight deck during flights and landings.  JFK and Auckland, NZ were my favorites.  There were never any emergencies on any of the flights where I would have been the first passenger on line to take over the controls. 

So, could I land a large, commercial jetliner?  I am very confident that if I had very competent coaching and guidance from air traffic control I could.  Without that?  It’s highly likely that a significant amount of metal would get bent. 

People always ask me if I’ve had any “scary moments” flying my plane.  Yes I have.  If you want me to write about one or two of those, leave a comment.

More to read on the subject of civilians landing commercial airplanes: Ask the pilot

Photo of the Gimli Glider, bent metal and all: Wikipedia

We Live in a World That Requires Revenue is, by a considerable margin, the top post on this blog.  I’m trying not to take it personally.  I laughed harder than anyone when I first saw it, especially since I’ve been using the “You can’t handle the truth” metaphor in my presentations and articles for many years.

So, last Monday I received this email.  I was thrilled!

My name is Chris Pappas and I believe you want to know where my Youtube video “A Few Good Expenses” came from.

I have been in sales most of my life and we decided to put the skit together to add a bit of humour to a sales conference a number of years back.

As you can probably tell by the quality acting, I’m definitely not an actor!!   :-)

The only reason I put it on Youtube was so that my friends and family could see it for a laugh as the file was too large to send via e-mail.

Since then the attention has been ridiculously complimentary. So much so that NBC, News America, Telstra, HP, amongst many others across the globe, have asked for the hi-res file to play at their sales conferences and the like. Needless to say I obliged.

Anyway, there’s the history mate.

Cheers,

Chris Pappas

The Frame Group Pty Limited

Level 11,189 Kent Street, GPO Box 4647, Sydney NSW 2001

www.framegroup.com.au

I’m very pleased that traffic on this blog has grown significantly since I created it last April.  With that in mind, I suspect some of you who are new to this blog may have missed some of the earlier posts. 

Here are the most popular, based upon this blog’s Top Posts stats:

1. Observing a Sales Training Program (Part 1)
2. Sales Training Company Revenue Models
3. Come On, Dave. Which Is The Best Sales Training Company?
4. The Fragmented Sales Training Industry
5. Sales Training Companies from a Unique Perspective (Part 1)
6. Sales Kick-off Meetings: Are Results on the Agenda?
7. What’s Wrong With Articles Containing Sales Tips?
8. Your Customer Is Learning How to Kick Your Butt
9. Selling Through the Customer’s Organization (Chart)
10. Sales Performance Measurement
11. We Live in a World That Requires Revenue (Humorous Bonus!)

Enjoy.

Since I started this blog, I’ve been reading books on writing.  (Mike and Jeremy, my editors at Sales and Marketing Management magazine probably wish I had begun upgrading my writing skills a long time ago.) 

I’ve also been reading the blogs of businesspeople who write well, such as Geoffrey James and John Caddell.  My brother, Lee Stein, renowned in the direct marketing arena, is a great writer, but he doesn’t have a blog. 

Blogs are supposed to be somewhat informal, but I think crisp, descriptive writing makes the experience so much better, even if you aren’t conscious of the quality of the writing.

I’ve recently learned to stay away from clichés.  Paula LaRocque, author ofThe Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well, impressed me when she pointed out why you should not use clichés: because everyone else does.  Not only does eliminating clichés make your writing richer (you’ve got to come up with cliché-replacements), but not using them differentiates you from other writers.  Now she had my attention. Differentiation.

I notice clichés a lot more when people are speaking than when they are writing.  When I observe sales trainers or sample a speaker’s content on a video, I notice that many of make regular use of clichés.  I think those clichés distance them from their audience.  Many clichés are generational.  If you’re a boomer, speaking to millenials, and you say, “fold up like an accordian,” you’ve dated yourself and probably forfeited some degree of your audience’s attention and your credibility.  “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” will have the same result and probably get PETA after you, as well. 

In the past I’ve used clichés a lot.  I thought they were clever.  Now I’m working hard to replace them with more colorful and appealing phrases.   If a cliché makes it onto this blog, please bring it to my attention.  Or if you’re in the audience when I’m speaking, same story.

I’ll be writing about buzzwords soon.  The buzzword is a cousin of the cliché.

If you’d just rather continue using your favorite clichés or even learn a few more, try Cliché Finder.

Sales and Marketing Alignment ***Wait for image to load, please.***

With all this talk about sales and marketing alignment, I figured the best way to get sales and marketing aligned is to morph a sales guy into a marketing guy and visa versa.  That way they’ll both understand what life is like as a member of the other team.

So Brian and I tried it out, just to see.

Let us know what you think.

Check out my podcast interview with Brian.

Morphing courtesy of www.MorpheusSoftware.net

In a few weeks I’ll be in Minnesota working with a new client. The first time I visited the twin cities was in the mid 1980’s. It was August and it was 32 degrees when I arrived. You don’t forget something like that.

When I first speak with any of that client’s team members, or anyone in Minnesota for that matter, somehow I feel obliged to relate that story. It must be boring for them. I’m sure they hear stories like that all the time from guys like me from warmer climes. 

I know how it feels from their perspective.  When people learn I live on Martha’s Vineyard they ask, “Isn’t that where Jaws was filmed?”—yes, or “Don’t the Kennedys live there?”—Not really.  Caroline now owns her mother’s place here—the rest of the clan are at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.  Sometimes people will ask me about JFK Jr.’s plane or Chappaquiddick. Sadly, this is that place. 

In any case, I’ve been sharing the following story with the new client. They like it because there is someplace colder than St. Paul.  It’s a perfect story for a hot summer day.

Photo: Suzy Allman for The New York Times

A Tortured Walk in a Deep Freeze
By DAVE STEIN
As it appeared in the NY Times, Feb. 22, 2005

I was delivering a speech at a company’s annual sales meeting in Edmonton, Alberta, home of the infamous Alberta clipper storms that were responsible for most of the snow dumped in the northern Midwest of the United States this winter.

My assistant warned me it would be very cold when I arrived. “Bring long underwear and your warmest clothes,” she said. “In fact, you should put your long underwear on before you leave the plane.”

I nodded. No way was I doing that.

It was minus 32 degrees Centigrade when we landed. “Pretty cold, eh?” the Air Canada pilot remarked as we pulled up to the gate. I tried to recall my high school lesson on temperature conversion. Was it 5/9 of C minus 32? Or 32 plus 5/9 of C?

You don’t feel that kind of cold for the first few minutes, so the short walk out of the terminal in Edmonton to the taxi was anticlimactic. It seemed like no big deal.

The next morning I decided to walk the five blocks from my hotel to the site of my speech. It was 6:30 a.m., and I had yet to hear the day’s weather forecast. Out of concern, the hotel’s night manager was summoned when I asked for directions. “Why don’t you take a taxi?” he asked.

Was he serious? A taxi for five blocks? I grew up in the Bronx. I could handle the cold.  And for the first few minutes, I could. As I made my way to the meeting, wearing layer upon layer, I didn’t feel a thing. The street was deserted. These Canadians sure are thin-skinned, I thought.

Then, it hit me without warning. Excruciating pain knifed through every one of my sinus cavities. I reflexively wrapped my scarf around my mouth, nose and ears even tighter and plowed on. Only two and a half blocks to go. I was channeling the Mount Everest climber and author, Jon Krakauer, of Into Thin Air.

I decided to pick up the pace, despite a thick sheet of ice caked on the sidewalks. Bad decision. Moving faster only increased my need for oxygen. I was now sucking more air and coughing violently as my alveoli went cryogenic.

One block left.

Come on, I thought. I’ve jumped out of a plane, walked on hot coals, mountain-biked across northern Thailand. I could do this.

I remembered a story about what happens when you spit in very cold weather. I just had to try it. I removed my scarf just long enough to spit. It froze before it hit the ground.
Finally, there I was. I opened the door, walked inside, and ended my tortured walk in the deep freeze.

I related my story to my audience that morning. It gave new meaning to the term icebreaker. They thought I was nuts. “Why didn’t you take a taxi?” someone asked.

I later learned that the average low temperature in Edmonton in January is 1 degree Fahrenheit. That morning it was minus 53 Centigrade with the wind chill factor. That’s a whopping minus 63 Fahrenheit.

Back in my office, I proudly related the experience to my assistant (careful to leave out the part about not wearing long underwear). To which she replied, “Why didn’t you take a taxi?”

(As told to Christopher Elliott, NY Times)

Don't use Cuervo Gold or white tequila. This is the good stuff!

It’s July. It’s Friday. Here’s a treat for you.* We’ll get back to the serious stuff on Monday.

Over the years I’ve had many requests for the recipe for my world-class frozen margarita. (The “world-class” designation was unanimous among the dozens of volunteers visiting our margarita testing laboratory, adjacent to ESR headquarters.)

Ingredients:

• 2 parts refrigerated Triple Sec
• 4 parts Sauza Hornitos 100% Agave Reposado (keep in freezer)
• 1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice
• 1 part Rose’s Lime Juice
• 2 cups of ice cubes
• 4 tbs “El Tesoro” 100% Agave Añejo (see photo at lower right)
• Lime wedges
• 2 margarita glasses kept in freezer

Yields 2 burro-kicking Margaritas plus refills!

Directions:

For the "floater."

1. Listen for the sound of friends and loved ones yelling, “Señor…” around 5:00 pm. (During the recession, on weekends only, we’ve moved that up to around 4:00.)
2. Squeeze one shot glass of fresh lime juice. Pour into a blender capable of crushing ice.
3. Pour one shot glass of Rose’s Lime Juice into blender. (Refrigerate Rose’s prior to use.)
4. Pour four shot glasses of frozen Sauza Hornitos 100% Agave Reposado into blender.
5. Pour two shot glasses of refrigerated Triple Sec into blender.
6. Add two cups of ice cubes. (Ice cubes should be frozen for most effective use.)
7. Blend until ice is completely crushed but before mixture becomes watery.
8. Pour into salted (or unsalted) margarita glass taken directly from the freezer.
9. Garnish with lime wedges.
10. Pour about two tablespoons of El Tesoro Añejo across top of each drink. Make a really big deal about this, since it’s very expensive. (We call this the “floater.”)
11. Immediately place blender containing remainder in freezer so mixture will be perfect for refills… Remember where you put the blender, since finding it after the first round may be difficult.
12. Enjoy. If your sinuses immediately implode from the shock of the frozen beverage, place a spoon concave side down, on your tongue. Then close your mouth. It really works!

If you call to thank us, please state your name very, very clearly. And please be sure your outgoing caller-ID is enabled as a backup.

* If you are going to drink, please do so responsibly. Do not drive, operate machinery, write blog posts, climb stairs, leave voicemails for your boss (or employees), perform surgery of any kind, or attempt to fly a plane after having consumed this beverage.

Are we headed into the TheEndOf-Zoic era?

I’m still loving my Kindle. 

Last night I was reading a fantastic book: Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.  (Hopefully my blog posts and columns will be more enjoyable for you to read as a result.)  A good friend of mine had recommended that I read Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World.  So I went browsing through the Kindle bookstore from my Kindle (regretfully this feature has caused me to slide into instant gratification mode—something I have spent a fair amount of time and energy getting out of), and came upon a number of books whose titles all began with “The End of.”

Is this a sign that we are entering a new era?  Perhaps now, after the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and the present Cenozoic era, we’re entering the TheEndOf-Zoic era.  You want evidence?  Here it is, in the form of just a few of the many book titles I found on Amazon with a quick search: 

• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
• The End of Food
• The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
• The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World
• The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
• The End of Days: Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return (The Earth Chronicles)
• The End of Nature
• The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists
• The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End
• The End of History and the Last Man
• The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World
• The End of the Beginning: Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant)
• The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor
• The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever
• The End of the Game: The Last Word from Paradise

So I’ll ask you again, are we entering a new era? 

Maybe I need an end-oscopy to find out.