Todd Duncan's Sales Mistake #4: Moonlighting

Duncan discusses moonlight on pp. 61-72 of his great book, Killing the Sale; the 10 Fatal Mistakes Salespeople make and how to avoid them. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004). He says, if you have to work longer for no more result, don't.

"Building a business-based life instead of a life-based business," is what Duncan says on p. 61 The point is central: work smarter not longer.

Many salesmen think that working more means producing more. They confuse activity with productivity. The central point here is that your business should support your life. Duncan says: "Do away with the notion that business and pleasure--selling and living--are two separate things. Selling and living must complement themselves." (p. 72).

If you're working 80-90 hours a week, you're guilty of moonlighting.

What do you think about this? Have you ever been guilty of posing? I'm trying to create more skilled entrepreneurs. Do you think this helps?

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Todd Duncan's Sales Mistake #3: Tinkering

Duncan defines Tinkering as "Treating the symptoms but not the sickness of poor selling efforts." See Todd Duncan, Killing the Sale; the 10 Fatal Mistakes Salespeople make and how to avoid them. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004), p 39.

Duncan claims tinkering is the most common mistake sales professionals make. Some examples from pp. 45-7:

>Trying to recover clients after sales fall through rather than trying to understand why clients are leaving.

>Trying to develop more scripts to overcome objectives rather than identifying prospects needs up front to prevent objections in the first place.

>Trying to overcome low sales by making more calls.

>Trying to work harder instead of smarter.

The solution: "Setting your standard and sticking to it....The more time you spend tinkering around," he says, "the more time you will have to produce successful sales." (p. 56)

There is no substitute for doing the hard work to understand how something should be done, then tracking outcomes and evaluating results and feeding that back into your understanding efforts. You should always be evaluating your proceedures, linking them to outcomes and goals.

He outlines how to really fix sales problems.

What do you think about this? Have you ever been guilty of posing? I'm trying to create more skilled entrepreneurs. Do you think this helps?

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Core Mission

Okay, you have your entrepreneurial capital in line. You've ramped up your passion, honed your leadership skills. You're expanding your network, and you have some money to devote to this project. What is your core mission in life? What are your core vales? What were you put on earth to do? What satisfies you? How will you know if you are successful? These are questions each of us needs to get a handle on in our lives.

Todd Duncan, in Killing the Sale; the 10 Fatal Mistakes Salespeople Make and How to Avoid Them. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004, says:

Success in sales has everything to do with keeping personal priorities. In other words, salespeople can increase their success only by putting boundaries on their businesses that help them up hold and promote their priorities throughout the day. If you don't put boundaries on your business, you'll never achieve balance in your life. Success by definition is supposed to produce satisfaction. Therefore, your sales career, if it is successful, should produce more life satisfaction. But if you don't know what makes you a satisfied person in the first place, you'll frequently invest time in things that don't matter and strive for things that don't add value to your life. [p.73]

Duncan has an exercise that you can use to help you answer these questions. He says it is you can find it at www.killingthesale.com, but when I checked on it, Google said it's not around. If you want to follow up, email me and I'll send it to you.

I first did this exercise in the fall of 2006. I was given the book and read it on vacation just to see what it was about. It turned out to be revolutionary in my life, and I'm going to go further into it in this blog. No I do it every 6-9 months to make sure I'm still on track.

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.