Colleen’s Blog

You probably know that when all else fails, going with your gut will typically better your chances at creating success for yourself. There's nothing wrong with trusting your gut to make decisions, as long as there is sufficient planning and testing beforehand. The most successful sales leaders will not enter a situation so blindly that they need to rely solely on a feeling to make a decision. Hope or gut feelings alone will not guarantee that a new sales strategy will be successful once implemented. Instead, these successful sales managers, leaders, and companies base their decisions on tangible results. In fact, when new sales strategies are implemented with sufficient planning, your hopes and feelings toward successful results have a much stronger foundation to them. ← Click To Tweet Rather than judging an idea at merely face or surface value, successful salespeople test the idea, analyze it and evaluate their findings. Doing so allows these salespeople to decide with real data, whether or not it makes sense to implement the idea on a grander scale.

I'm trying to buy a pocket door for our bathroom and discovered that Masonite manufactures the perfect one. I look on their website and find a local re-seller and the first one that pops up is Florida Lumber. Great, they are open Saturdays! Chris pops down to place the order. The door should be no more than $450 Florida Lumber suggests an alternative manufacture that will cost between $650-$1100 and take 5-6 weeks to order. They also tell us that Masonite is out of business.  This seems odd since Chris and I were both on their website that day. Plus, we can't wait 5-6 weeks. Chris leaves empty handed and calls Masonite direct. Masonite is NOT out of business. They are alive and well, shipping products all over the US. Home Depot is now a re-seller so we call them, order the door, and are told it will be in in 9 days. Price is as originally expected. When we asked Masonite why someone would tell us a lie about them they responded with:

In today’s fast paced, automated world, it’s quite common to send an email out and receive an instantaneous reply from an autoresponder. Don’t get me wrong, if used effectively, autoresponders are great at providing your client with prompt communication. However, they can also be genuinely perceived as “cold” if you aren’t careful with your automated messages. I sent an email recently and received this automated response: “We have received your email. Emails are answered twice daily. Thank you, enjoy your day!” What’s your first impression of this automated response? If you’re anything like me you may agree with the following: