I think it is an important—natural question every sales professional should be constantly be challenging themselves and their customers with. Great sales professionals challenge their customers to think about their businesses differently. They not only solve their customers problems, but they find new opportunities for their customers to expand and grow their businesses. They bring their customers new ideas and possibilities—possibly provocative ideas.

These ideas engage the customer in a different type of conversation with the customer. We move from how they solve today’s problems, but what they can do and where they go tomorrow. The interesting thing is that you don’t have to have the “right idea,” the mere act of engaging the customer in a different conversation changes your relationship profoundly.

So Now It’s Provocative Selling!.

A few weeks ago, while listening to a favorite morning radio program, I was reminded of the impact on our thoughts in any economy…

You see during the days of Jimmy Carter’s 10% unemployment and 21% interest rates we did not have the various ways to distribute negative commentary. Internet? No! Cable TV? No! Talk show hosts? No! What did we do. We just worked through it.

Think about your salespeople and think about your leadership. How does negative news affect commercial and residential real estate professionals? How does losing a sale or having a sale placed on hold affect salespeople? How does learning about the stock market’s ups and downs affect marketing folks? How does news of an impending depression affect selling strength? How does hearing negative remarks about a President’s economic moves affect your belief in prospecting and sales goal achievement? How does filling your mind with all this stuff affect your ability to inspire others? And, in how many ways and how often do you take in these messages and hold them in your mind?

Great Sales Managers Guard Against Negative Thinking In Any Economy | SalesManage Solutions Blog.

Welcome to the October, 2008 edition of the Carnival of Trust. As usual, we’ve combed the farthest reaches of the blogosphere to find the Top Ten Greatest posts of the past month related to trust across the broad categories of Sales and Marketing, Strategy, Economics and Politics, Advising and Influencing, and Leadership and Management.

Congratulations to all the selected posts, which were excellent. If your submission didn’t get picked this time, please don’t despair; submit again next month. And enjoy the reading.

Carnival of Trust for October, 2008.