My friend Jill Konrath and I set a call with a prospective business sponsor for our big Get Back to Work Faster initiative. Jill emailed me a draft copy of the book and I sent it to my CEO before the call, so he could prepare. The Go to Meeting that afternoon turned into a disaster.  Since the CEO had not seen the book, I asked Jill to show him the 118 page book on the fly — Jill was unprepared.

How can the world’s best expert in sales and a very experienced and talented VP of Sales and Marketing both screw up the meeting? This turned into a very popular article on RainToday, True Confessions of a Sales Expert.

In reality, the blame does not all lie with Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies.  I should have known better too.

I assumed the CEO read the email.  Little did I know that outbound email was not working and hundreds of emails were queueing up.  I could have called and confirmed it.  Nor did I reach out to Jill to plan the meeting.  Finally, I did not ask basic qualifying questions — for instance, “If I should show you a way to book $3.5 million more in the next 12 months, but you had to spend $30,000 to get it, is that doable?”

Thanks Jill — undoubtedly you could have done better.  But I’ll also add a mea culpa.  The moral here is that even two of the very best make mistakes.

For companies looking for best practices in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go.  CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads and implement processes for business to business lead generation.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, alead generation company, who helps businesses create lead generation campaigns and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers.  He can be reached at (516) 284-4930 or [email protected].