Does your on-the-job behavior match the thinking of a baseball player?  Are you always anticipating the next pitch, and what you’ll do if the ball goes here, and what you’ll do if the ball goes there, and what you’ll do if the signals change . . . or the winds change . . . or your superstitious teammates don’t change the shirts they’ve worn for the last three games?

Nothing wrong with thinking like a baseball player unless the company or industry you’re in is Armenian or Finnish, or simply doesn’t leave you time to think.  Maybe the company or industry that you’re trying to represent as the star left fielder, is busy playing hockey or fast-break basketball?

Circumstances like these make for tough going, when trying to get your glove to get in the game!

Worse, you could be a serious golfer in the middle of a football game (keep the first aid squad phone numbers handy!).  Let’s face it, you can’t play soccer on a tennis court or water polo on a ski slope (Yikes!  Now that would be cold, and you’d never want to miss the ball and have to chase after it, especially in a bathing suit!).

So, what’s the message? If your work situation is unhappy, or giving you headaches, knots in your stomach, or other stress-provoked ailments like lower back pain (or, really, just about anything you can think of . . . uh huh, including those two merciless extremes: diarrhea and constipation), step back from the action (no pun intended), and take some deep breaths [See Archives post: "Are you breathing?" http://bit.ly/bo3ZJy ]

Then, ask yourself if you’re “playing the same game” as everyone else, and especially of course, the boss!  Entrepreneurs (and male, female, black, white, purple, orange, MBA or otherwise, makes no difference) rarely survive corporate life because they march to a different drummer.  Regardless of money earned, most would prefer to be an individual performer than to be any team player.

Conversely, not many corporate types succeed with business startups.  Often, because they fail to realize that they must now pay the expense account submissions, turn out the lights, take out the trash, skip lunch and work far past the luxurous 9-5 weekdays they’re used to. [See Archives post: "TO ENTREPRENEUR OR NOT TO ENTREPRENEUR?" http://bit.ly/avuEpT ]

Maybe you need to examine the environment you work in more carefully and consider if it’s really the match for your skills and interests and personality that it once appeared to be.  We do change, you know.  And, yes indeed, old dogs can learn new tricks.

But before you decide to toss your corporate cookies out the window to become a deep sea fisherman or fisherwoman , think again! The grass . . . yes, it does look greener over there. Where? Maybe anywhere. In fact, these days, EVERYthing is greener! It’s getting hard to tell which came first — environmentalists or St. Patrick?!

It seems like all our prospects are crazy-busy these days. They’re too busy to answer the phone, too busy to return your message, too busy to make a decision and too busy to even think.

My friend & colleague, Jill Konrath, just came out with a new book to address this key issue. It’s called: “SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers.”

I highly recommend it. It’s already soared to the #1 Amazon sales book!

Here is an excerpt from the book…

Make Decisions Easier for Your Prospects

By Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies

Crazy-busy prospects can’t handle complexity. They hate it when things are difficult to decode, decide or decifer. It grinds them to a screeching halt – which is the normal human reaction to being overwhelmed and stressed out.

Because of the chaotic business environments we work in, simplicity has recently emerged as a key factor in sales success.

As a seller, your job is to make things easier and minimize the effort for your frazzled prospects. This is especially true when you’re dealing with people who seldom make decisions like the one you’re proposing.

Here are some strategies you can use to make things easier for your frazzled prospects.

Augment, Don’t Replace

Your prospects already use something or someone to address their needs. You can make it a whole lot easier for them to get buy-in for your product or service by positioning it as an “add on” to an existing program, process, or technology.

For example, when I talk to VPs of Sales, I always stress that my workshops on selling to crazy-busy buyers or cracking into new accounts compliment their existing sales training initiatives. I even assure them that I’ll tie my strategies in with their current methodology.

By coexisting with the status quo, you can get your foot in the door without encountering a major battle. Once you’re in, you can work to expand your relationship and win additional business.

Sometimes your “competitors” are internal staff whose number one concern is job loss. I knew this was going to be a major obstacle recently when I proposed a new idea to a prospect. So I dealt with it head on.

First I showed them how we could bring much-needed services to an underserved customer demographic. They loved it. Then, I talked about leveraging outside resources to “jump-start” the new program. And, I clearly stated that the ultimate goal was to turn it over to their IT as soon as possible.

Not only did I avoid an insurrection, but I quickly got their support because it provided them with more job security. Augmentation is good. It simplifies and speeds up the decision process.

Think and Act Small

If your prospects like what you’ve proposed, they’ll want to get it approved as soon as possible. However, big ideas with big budgets are riskier and require more buy-in.

As a result, they’re harder to get through the system. When you start losing momentum, your whole proposal is at risk.

So even if you have a big idea, be realistic with your prospects. Talk about starting small. Show them how you can get started, demonstrate your success, and build from there. For example, you could:

• Propose an initial assessment to understand the scope of the problem.
• Tackle a small problem where you could demonstrate immediate short-term results.
• Focus on bringing in just one of your products, services, or solutions.
• Suggest a change in only one of the departments or a single facility.

IT seller P. V. Bhaskar frequently proposes pilot projects to his clients. With a 90 percent conversion rate, they’ve become his secret weapon to simplify the decision-making process.

Prior to getting started, he allows the CIO and CFO to set the success parameters. As he says, “When a pilot exceeds the incumbent’s performance, all I need to do is demonstrate that the success can be scaled to an actual project as well.”

Going for the whole shebang at once makes things more difficult. And when you’re working with frazzled customers, that’s a setup for having your opportunity get derailed, delayed or dismissed forever.

But once you get your foot in the door, the hardest part is over. If you do a good job on your initial piece of business, it will be logical for your prospect to move to the next stage with your company. Your next proposal simply augments what they’re already doing.

Root Out All Complexity

In many cases, your prospects don’t know what to look for or how to decide. If things get complicated, they’ll quit and you’ll be gonzo.

That’s why it’s imperative for you and your company to ask these questions all the time:

• At which point do our prospects tip into overwhelm?
• What are the complexities that grind decisions to a halt?
• How can we reduce the ease and effort needed to make a decision?
• In what ways can we minimize decision-making risk?

Discuss these questions with your colleagues. Observe what happens in conversations with your prospects. Talk to your existing customers to get their feedback.

Then eliminate as much complexity as is humanly possible.

If you don’t, it can easily become a major showstopper – which is not a desirable outcome. When you embrace the first SNAP Rule: Keep it Simple, you’ll win more business with a whole lot less effort.

Sales managers often wonder why team activity levels are so low. “It didn’t used to be that way,” they think to themselves, and then it gets worse. It transforms into an attendance problem. Sales mangers become babysitters, “Where are you? Why aren’t you here? Every minute you are late is costing you deals!”

Disciplinary action taken on attendance issues doesn’t solve the core issues… engagement, buy-in, productivity, etc. Just because they are physically there doesn’t mean they are mentally there.

It’s about Return On Effort (ROE). If your sales reps feel like their ROE is low, then guess what? You’ll have an activity problem… you’ll have an attendance problem… and you’ll end up with a turnover problem.

Don’t be a task master… Be a sales mentor! Task masters walk around pushing activities. Sales mentors teach strategies and techniques that produce immediate results!

If a sales person is failing, the answer does not come from pushing them to do more of the same activities that aren’t working!

Higher activity levels produce greater results when you are engaged in the right activities. Then it becomes a question of sustainability… and that sustainability is directly related to ROE.

Long-term success comes through an ability to pinpoint sales behaviors that need tweaking. Check out this Art Sobczak’s video on Smart Calling (amazon affiliate link)…

When you develop your people and teach them techniques that significantly increase ROE, you don’t have to worry about activity and attendance. Successful sales people work harder, arrive early, and stay late. Nothing solves problems faster… than winning!