Sales Prospecting Perspectives

“Most people meander in and out of lots of conversations. Don’t be most people. Be tighter than that. Be more influential.”

Craig Wortmann, who has written several guest posts for us including How to Optimize Your Sales Engine in 30 Days and 5 Things Salespeople Should Stop Doing Immediately, recently released a new eBook, How to Communicate With Influence for Sales Pros & Leaders. Wortmann, CEO of the tools and services firm Sales Engine and professor of professional selling, entrepreneurship and leadership at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provided this eBook as a resource for sales professionals to learn how to become better influencers, better conversationalists and better sellers. As a reader who flew through the book in half an hour, I can confidently say that "How to Communicate with Influence" accomplished all of that and more.

I’m often surprised by how many awkward phrases, spelling mistakes and grammar blunders I see on the Internet. Renowned blogs and magazines post content that I have to stop reading halfway through because doing so is frankly painful. Sometimes, I receive sales emails so replete with grammar inaccuracy that I delete them before finishing them. I definitely don't reply to them. If you're a sales prospector or marketer, this is certainly not the reaction you want readers to have to your content. 

The office is teeming with people moving between desks, rushing to write information down or share something with a co-worker. Phone conversations can be heard from every corner of the office, and the voices mingle to produce one low drone, a din heard throughout. In one corner of the office, a man hangs up the phone and emits an exasperated sigh. In the other corner of the office, a woman jumps up for joy, pumping her fists in the air. There’s an air of excitement in the office: success could happen for anyone; anyone can make a difference. It’s a wild house of ambitious thrill-seekers; it’s a jungle in there.