A Perfect Failure Part 2: Wait Until You Catch Up  🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Every salesperson on the planet shares the same fantasy. Someday, they're going to get caught up. Every email will be answered. Every quote will be completed. Every CRM record will be updated. Every voicemail will be returned. They'll finally lean back in their chair, admire a perfectly organized desk, and shout hurrah. Here I sit, almost five decades into my career, and that day has never arrived. I leave the office with twenty emails in my inbox and return the next morning to find sixty. I'm convinced my to-do list breeds after dark. Nobody has explained the biology. How does 20 become 60 overnight? Quotes multiply. Meetings appear on the calendar without permission. Customers somehow develop emergencies while I'm sleeping. If you're waiting until you've caught up before you begin prospecting, you've unintentionally created a permanent excuse. Successful salespeople ...

Reactive Selling Isn't a Sin if You Do It with a Purpose By Frank Hurtte Proactive, proactive, and more proactive! Selling stories flood the internet like a tsunami of advice. Is it just me, or is every sales expert on the planet preaching some kind of “Max Overdrive” model of proactive action? Truth be told, that approach might be completely impractical for a big segment of our industry. We’ve bought into it, too. Every time a sales manager steps up in a conference room and unveils their vision of a 100% proactive future, the team shudders, digs in their heels, and covertly begins planning how to avoid it. True Confessions I used to be one of those guys at the front of the room pontificating about proactive selling. These days, I’m convinced reactive selling has an important place, especially in the world of knowledge-based distribution. Through up-close observation and dozens of interviews with successful sellers, I’ve learned that reactive selling, done right, is far from passiv...