I have a list of articles that I intend to write, and I think it's on my roll-top desk but I'm feeling too lazy right now to retrieve it.

So, I'm wracking my brain, instead, trying to conjure up what I'm going to compose, next.

Stupid, don't you think?

Of course it is, but it's exactly what we do as salespeople when we haven't planned our prospecting work, thoroughly. We try to brainstorm who we're going to call on next, and this wastes an incredible amount of time and energy.

Who we're going to call should not be a sales decision; it's a marketing function, in the same way that pricing, packaging, and promotion are. These determinations have to be evaluated with care and precision, to be effective.

Once we sit down to sell, most of our hard or creative thinking should be over!

A wise client of mine once remarked, "Selling is so easy, it's hard!”

It's a memorable line, but I'd modify it, slightly. Selling SHOULD be easy; it should be as streamlined as possible, in fact, it should resemble an assembly line operation.

One of the raw materials, if you will, that goes into our manufactured product, is our calling list. We shouldn't have to stop the line to go and mine more raw materials—that's just stupid!

We make selling unnecessarily hard when we don't plan our work and make sure that we have enough quality people to co

You should never, ever let this happen to you, because if you do, you'll be losing a lot of money!

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