Looking Backwards and Forwards

It’s my birthday. Yes, 62 years ago today, I made my way onto this floating orb. I thought I’d take today to look over the last year’s blog posts to see and reflect upon what I wrote about the past 12 months.

First think I noticed is that I was really cranky for many months. I apologize. I was sick too many months and it sure reflected itself in my topics and too frequent snarkiness. Thanks for putting up with me. I’m all better now.

I wrote more than a few politically charged rants and opinions about the quality of our elected officials. There were stories about Big Pharma and Big Ag that I hoped made you think about our country’s policies towards both of those powerful forces and how they impact all of us every single day.

There were quite a few stories about bad customer service along with some ideas of how to extend extraordinary service to your customers. I hope they helped.

I had about six podcasts but that isn’t nearly enough. I already have seven new ones scheduled to be recorded over the next few weeks and I’m about to extend offers to at least ten other guests who I think you will find interesting.

Expect more stories too. You seem to really enjoy when I or my guests write or record stories. There will also be a lot more videos and some of them will be stories.

I’ll continue to write about creativity and leadership but I think you’ll find that more and more I will be focusing on sales. You may have already noticed that. Helping you to be a better salesperson has the most potential, I believe, for helping all of us at a time of great economic upheaval and yet a time of tremendous potential for being able to live your dreams, do productive work, and create your own work of art.

What else would you like to see me write or talk about the next twelve months?

How can I help you?

Here is something you can do for me. As you may already know, I’m working on my next book following up Listen First – Sell Later and I’m already well into it. It has twenty-plus chapters and will be about 50,000 words by the time it is edited. It will be a sales book (no surprise there) and I’ll be focusing on small businesses and their particular sales challenges.

Want to be part of the book? I’m looking for a few people who have started their own businesses or have worked in sales for small businesses and have a story to tell about their journey. I’m especially interested in hearing from those of you who started your own company without much of a clue about sales only to learn you had no alternative but to learn how to sell.

What are some of the things you learned and triumphed over?

If you’re interested, please email me at bob at bob poole dot com or you can also leave a few sentences about your experiences in the comments section.

Photo compliments of barest_smidgen