Do you remember April 1, 2020? The entire world was in lockdown, and at Objective Management Group (OMG) we had just 10 days to figure out how to convert our annual four-day international conference for sales experts to a three-day virtual event over Zoom. The 200 in attendance loved it!

By late last summer, we knew full well that our 2021 conference would also be virtual. The difference was that we would have seven months to prepare, and we wanted to optimize the conference specifically for a virtual event. How was it different from what we accomplished a year earlier? … Read the rest

At the end of summer we moved our son into his dorm to begin his freshman year of college. The college president’s opening remarks were virtual, so we joined the Zoom stream from our hotel room and listened in. He had some really useful things to share with the new freshmen and while his thoughts were targeted to the students, they apply quite equally to salespeople.

Among the points he made, these seemed to be just as applicable to salespeople:

• Show up.
• Do the work.
• Try approaches that you haven’t previously attempted.
• You will be uncomfortable but do it anyway.

We had a request for some data from one of our longtime partners.

My knee-jerk reaction to her request was that it would be a big nothing burger. She asked for data that would show the difference between salespeople who are goal oriented and those who are not. I did not expect much of a difference except in the area of motivation but I was wrong. Very wrong! Check out some of the profound differences this data mining uncovered!

Objective Management Group (OMG) measures 21 sales-specific core competencies. We have data from our evaluations and assessments of 1,942,180 salespeople. Can … Read the rest

It’s been rainy and cool, so the leaves are dropping from the trees, the peak color has passed and it’s time to focus on something else.

Speaking of focus, this morning I was watching three squirrels each doing their thing.

Squirrel #1, who I named Ernest, was finding lots of nuts and burying them. His nest was full and he will reap the benefits of his hard work over the winter.

Squirrels #2 and #3, who I named MT and LayZ, were playing. They were running up and down tree trunks, jumping from limb to limb, running in circles and … Read the rest

If you’re young enough, some of the questions in the first few paragraphs that follow won’t apply because you haven’t experienced the world without the innovations mentioned below. Don’t let that prevent you from reading this, because after the milestones, we’ll get to the good selling stuff.

For those of you who are my age or older, do you remember the first time you saw color TV? For me it was the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the early 1960s. Or the first time you watched cable with more than six channels and without snow? Wireless remote controls? OK, … Read the rest

I don’t get stressed anymore when I’m driving.
All it took was for me to not exceed the speed limit. I’m not sure whether it was my navigation system repeatedly telling me to “obey all traffic laws” each time I started the car, or my wife reminding me that I needed to be a good role model for our soon‑to-be driving 16-year-old son. I admit that this was much easier for me to do after I gave up my Jaguar for a Lincoln Navigator. It holds much more baseball equipment!

There is an exception to not exceeding the speed limit. … Read the rest

What the Data Tells Us

I can’t remember a spring where the pollen was worse than in 2018. You go to the car wash and an hour later your beautiful car is covered in yellow crud and you’re out $20. A waste.

Perhaps you have an irrigation system with a rain sensor that tells the controller that your lawn and flower beds don’t need to be watered today because it is pouring outside. Yet, when you look out the window you see that the sprinklers are running despite the existence of a rain sensor. A waste.

Did you ever spend … Read the rest

I don’t know about you but for every benefit I get from LinkedIn, I get an equal amount of frustration. Some people, like me, have criteria for who they will invite and whose invitation they will accept on LinkedIn. How many times has this happened to you?

Someone invites you to join their LinkedIn network or asks if they can join yours. You accept. And then it happens….

In the first example, I received this message a week after I accepted this individual’s invitation:

“Hello Dave, I noticed we haven’t had a chance to talk yet having been connected now … Read the rest

Several recent LinkedIn posts have urged readers to pick up the phone instead of trying to find new opportunities by using social media. I wrote a very popular article about using the phone three years ago called “The Next Can’t Miss Game Changer for Sales.”

I have data that show that the very people who don’t score well at hunting (reluctant, ineffective or both) also score poorly at social selling while those who score the highest for hunting score higher for social selling too. Check out this data:

• The weakest 10% of all salespeople own the lowest average scores for