Here's an idea for your sales team.

Take one day every week in July and have a customer blitz theme. A couple of ideas for blitzing:

1. Personalized Summer Candy Blitz
2. Personalized CD Blitz
3. Personalized Media Blitz
4. Personalized Video Blitz
5. "Wendys Frosty" Customer Appreication Day
6. "Ice Cream" Social Day
7. "Pizza" Lunch and Learn Presentation

Personalized Summer Candy Blitz -
go to www.mymms.com and order some M&M candy for each Tier A customer or prospect. Hand deliver their personalized chocolates along with a folder with the best applications you can do for them that you feel help them grow. Ask for time to take them through your product offerings (printing, Cross media, ect). Pick 10 customers/prospects to do this with and 90 days later - measure results of any orders you recieved.

Personalized CD Blitz -
Have your designer take some of their jobs from the past and redesign them in some way to make them better. Put at least 10 redesigns in each disk. Personalize the CD wrapper. Hand deliver the CDs with the new ideas and ask to take them through what is on there. The idea here is that your contact might like a few of them and then forward/send to other people in their organization. This could create buzz for your company and reinforce why they do business with you!

Personalize Media Blitz -
Take your teir A prospects and customers and create their own customized binder with custom applications that fit them. Hand deliver on a blitz day. One benefit here is the intell you will get from the internal team as you discuss what media applications should be in that specific customers binder. New ideas should emerge for your rep.

Personalize Video Blitz -
This one can be done via email so that your videos can be forwarded. The idea here is for you to create a personalized video and send to the tier A customers/prospects. Perhaps thanking them for the business. Or perhaps its a prospect and a message about why switch and do business with you. You never know when this type approach might make the difference in getting the face/face meeting you need.

Throughout July, be on the lookout for my "blitzing". SMILE

The sales profession can be one of the best and fun places to work. On the other hand, it can also be one of the worst.

Most managers/owners think that sales people love or hate their job based on how much money they make. In my opinion, that's not always true.

Take 2009 for example. 2009 was tough for many of you. And in turn, it was tough for me, from a performance perspective. In fact, while I have made our Presidents Club Level 3 of the past 4 years (thanks to many of you), 2009 was the year I didn't make it. So it would be easy to assume I hated my job that year.

However, because of my strong customer relationships and the fact that I had incredible patience and inspiration from my manager, 2009 was still a fun and motivating year. And I wonder if 2010 and 2011 would have been as successful had 2009 been stressful instead of fun?

If you have great sales people, I encourage you to keep them inspired and motivated because if you do, results over time will follow. However, if you beat them down, their future results with you might easily suffer and you never know it. So in the end, you caused them and you to lose sales. The great ones might just then wind up helping another company do great things.

A couple of tips.
First, don't beat them up on the whys (why you won, why you lost, why you did something a certain way). You should talk about the "whys" however do it in a constructive way. And, ask them what you can do help them and then do it!

Second, don't say something is unacceptable unless you know the facts and the customer. This creates negative energy. Instead, listen, ask questions and then give ideas to help them overcome the barriers.

Third, take the positive side of things. Postive energy is far more effective than negative energy, especially for sales people.

Finally, here's an inspiration I like to watch. The next time your top gun loses a deal -- play this for them!