I spent a very busy weekend out in the snow that has covered much of Britain over the past couple of weeks.

After some serious sledging (one of the benefits of living in the Pennine Hills ) and a great deal of shoveling snow so as to be able to get my car out for work on Monday morning (a downside of living in the Pennines) I slumped exhausted in front of the t.v.

Nothing much caught my attention so I settled into a re run of Casino Royale (the latest version). I am a Bond fan and I love this film. It is amusing to think how much of a success this new version of the the Bond franchise has been; the two Daniel Craig films have each out performed in relative terms all the films that have gone before them. We have all come to accept the new Bond and the new style of film making.

Yet lets not forget the resistance that was generated in the media and on the internet when Craig was announced as the new Bond . Websites such as Craignotbond.com and Noblondebond.com attracted much attention. Debates on the fan sites and in the media were intense. Putting Daniel Craig in the role made no sense. He was blonde and everyone knows that Bond has dark hair, he was not as well known as some other rivals for the role, and he did not seem particularly good looking. (certainly by comparison to his predecessor) How could he possibly play Bond.

What the customers/fans did not appreciate was the new direction that the franchise was taking. In the tech savvy and occasionally dangerous world that we live in we struggle to believe in master criminals intent on taking over the world or in invisible cars. We do however understand how brutal the world can be and  post 9/11 how brutal things can happen to ordinary people. Jason Bourne and Jack Baur had also changed our expectations of what secret agents do.

If the producers of Casino Royale had listened too closely to the fans they would have hired a Brosnan /Connery look a like.  They would have created an evil genius baddie, brought Q out of retirement and hey presto the faithful would be happy. However the “faithful” do not make a film profitable, its the rest of us those who enjoy a good thriller,but who don’t feel the need to spend our time on the fansites ,that really matter.

Leadership is about taking note of what your most loyal customers say but not being in thrall to it. It is being able to see the wider forces shaping your landscape and having the courage to strike out in a different direction when the situation demands it. It is also about having the confidence to sell your vision of the world to others.

The new Bond team are to be commended for their insight and their courage and in time someone will have to reinvent he character once again. I predict that when that time comes the faithful will stand against any radical changes to the hero they have come to know, the websites will be launched to campaign for more of the same, but if the film makers do as good a job as they have with the latest Bond they will fade away and we will all settle in to the new era refreshed and excited by the prospect of something different.

Leadership is about making the right decision over the popular one.

Personally though I still miss Moneypenny!

Just about every salesperson that I have ever asked has admitted to bouts of “phone fear”. Simply put this is a state of anxiety that grabs us as we reach for the phone, that makes us hesitate to pick up the phone and start dialing and starts a chain reaction in our minds that leads to procrastination and distraction. Phone fear makes any job (even rearranging your filing cabinet) more appealing than actually calling up prospects and generating some business. If professional sales people experience this, then one must feel for the entrepreneur who is in business because they had a great idea, a grand design and all they really want to do is develop a thriving business. Having to take on the sales role without an inclination for selling can be daunting and many entrepreneurs suffer bouts of phone fear. So here are a few tips that have helped me over the past twenty years or so and still do when my confidence dips and the fear takes hold.

#1 Make a game of it, imagine that you are on a reality t.v. show or in a team completing a business simulation, if you knew the whole thing was a game how differently would you react, how scared would you really be of making the call. As one of my former colleagues used to say “Fake it,til you make it”. I know it sounds a bit mad but I have used this technique over and over again. The fear just melts away in the process.

#2 Sell in half an hour chunks, and schedule the chunks early in the day. Make it your aim to just keep calling for half an hour, don’t worry about the results, they don’t matter what matters is that you don’t stop. Scribble notes as you go and do your admin once the selling is over. When you have done one half hour schedule the next one. Your only aim is to get through to clients and give it your best shot.

# 3 Challenge your negative beliefs with empirical evidence. Our negative beliefs are often played out in our minds as a critical voice, the voice that says “they wont be interested”, “your not good enough”, “everyone thinks that your being pushy”. Try my 20 Call Challenge Make twenty effective calls and keep a note of the clients reaction and see how accurate your beliefs are. During a recent sales campaign (I had a new product to take to market) I started to have doubts as to whether I was being a bit of a pain. I took the twenty call challenge and with every contact I spoke to I measured their response on a scale of 1-10, 1 being hostile 10 being welcoming with open arms. After twenty calls only one was hostile, there were no 10’s but the mode average score was 6.5. So its not true when my critical voice says no one wants to talk to me in fact only one in twenty people are hostile to the approach, the majority are reasonably approachable and willing to talk (this doesn’t mean they always want to buy your product by the way ). Negative beliefs have trouble surviving in the cold hard light of factual evidence.

# 4 Sell with some one else, time goes faster, the support is always welcome and peer pressure keeps you calling.

#5 Practice your openings and introductions. The hardest part of any cold calling is the first twenty or thirty seconds after which the nerves seem to fall away. Have a few different introductions rehearsed and ready to go so your first impression is always a good one. One of the best sales people I ever met had only three introductions which he actually kept on a piece of paper in front of him. Not once in three years did I hear him deviate from the introductions nor did he ever refer to the piece of paper. In his words the introductions were his way of easing himself into the call with confidence and the paper was merely a comfort blanket, an insurance if you will, just incase he felt nervous.

A little anxiety about sales calls is perfectly natural, in truth all the best sales people I deal with say that they feel it. I believe that some anxiety about the call shows that we care about the impact we may have on others. Sales people who have no fear generally don’t care about the clients, they care only about the sales they can make. Be aware that feeling some fear is natural, however you always have a choice about how you respond to that fear. Treat the fear as front page news and it grows, treat it as an interesting by product of how much you care about your product and your client and it becomes manageable. Your initial fears can either escalate or decline depending on how you choose to play the game.

If you have any questions about these strategies and others that can help overcome phone fear drop me aline or post them here.

There has been a steady stream of enquiries this week from entrepreneurs, concerned about the lack of sales in the last few weeks.

Obviously the economic downturn is having it’s effect on purchases and purchasers. In my own field Guardian Education reported that more than 50% of buyers of training and education services expect their budgets to be cut this year. However I do wonder whether the real issue is that many sales people and entrepreneurs have, for a number of years now , been able to sell their product without really having to stretch themselves. When we have a steady flow of leads and confidence abounds in the marketplace we become good at customer service and marketing and account management but our sales skills often whither somewhat on the vine. In the past few years I have become accustomed to pitching for business in a competitive environment, but it has been a while since I have had to persuade a client that maintaining their training budget s a good idea. Interestingly one never has to work hard at the logical argument, (of course well trained staff will help you come through the recession Duh!) the real issues facing clients at this moment are all emotional issues. Fear, feeling unable to stand up to the FD or the board, uncertainty about the future, and confusion as to what our real priorities are; these are reasons that people are reluctant to commit to investments in the future. Really good sales people thrive in this environment, they offer calm amongst chaos, solutions not products. The most important skills they have right now are listening, empathy and creativity.

But many sales people will actually give up in the face of the media storm, they will tell themselves that it’s not worth calling a client because they don’t have any money or because they are laying people off. If they do go to see their clients they obsess about getting the same amount of revenue as last year rather than solving the problems that the client faces this year.

We are in a new game now, treat every client as a new contact, everything that you knew about their needs and their priorities is subject to change. Now is the time to be out there in the field making your mark. Remember that many of your prospects are having a tough time and there is a world of difference between empathizing with them and being morose with them. You may be the brightest spark in their otherwise stressful day, don’t waste the opportunity. Generate your own energy, become associated in your clients mind with someone who can help and wants to help. Even if you come up with ideas and proposals that the client likes but ultimately rejects,  you still remain fixed in their minds as a “value adder”.

In spite of all the woe now is a great time to get noticed. Happy hunting