davecriswell

January 16, 2009

Fit Werx Gives Back

I’ve long been a fan of Fit Werx. I bought my first tri-bike from them in 2006 and they have been helpful with every aspect of cycling I’ve asked of them. So, it was no surprise to see that they are giving back through their Fit Werx gives back program.

In short, Fitwerx is donating 3% of pre-tax sales towards a charity if you mention a registered charity prior to your purchase. I’ve reistered Bretton Woods Adaptive with the Fit Werx effort so if you or anyone you know is making any bike related purchases I urge you to consider giving Fitwerx a call. It’s a no lose situation – you’ll get great service and great products by Fitwerx and contribute to a great charity at the same time.

January 3, 2009

New year’s day run

I’ve written before that I really enjoy running on holidays. I had a great run on both Thanksgiving and Christmas day this year and I was really looking forward to my New Year’s Day run…kind of a way to shock the system to help give a different perspective on the upcoming new year.

With all the cold and snowy weather we have over the past few weeks, as new year’s day approached I have kept close tabs to see what the weather might be that day. It wasn’t looking good leading up to the day and lived up to the forecast.

My training schedule had 1 hour 20 minutes slated for Sunday, but I decided to move it to New Year’s Day since I wanted to do a run anyway. I’ve clocked the distance from my house to the indoor pool in Downtown Dover which is about 4 miles. I figured that going there and back would put me at about the time I wanted.

I waited until late morning in hopes of the temperature warming up as much as possible. That didn’t happen. Weather.com showed an air temp of 7 degrees and wind chill of -11 degrees. Winds were showing 17 mph with gusts of 25 mph. I started to re-think my plan.

As I looked at my cold weather running gear I thought I could put on enough layers to stay comfortable for a while. My layers consisted of two running briefs, long sleeve pants with a wind layer, one long sleeve thermal base layer, a wind proof jacket, wind proof vest, balaklava, hat, running gloves and mittens. I thought about two pairs of socks but decided to go with one.

About 15 minutes into the run I look at my watch to see how my heart rate was doing and noticed the signal had gotten lost. I pressed the button that is supposed to re-engage the monitor, and through some combination of a low battery and sub-zero temperatures the watch completely shut down. Excellent….

The wind and the windswept snowy roads were as I expected. Running up hills was pretty much useless as each step forward seemed to put me no further ahead. But I made it through and felt good that I finished.

As much of a struggle as it was, it was a good way to start the new year.

Thankfully I had my route planned

December 29, 2008

Training begins…

I had a great run yesterday. Temperature in the mid 50’s gave me the opportunity to run in shorts and short sleeves, the legs felt good and my mind was racing with what seemed like a million thoughts on the upcoming year.

Not having run much over the past five weeks I didn’t have the chance to have that kind of flow of ideas that clears my head every once and a while. It was good to feel that again.

I realized that I missed it so much that I’m moving my formal Ironman trainig up a little bit so I can begin to take advantage of the momentum I built up yesterday. Suzan isn’t going to have my first training block ready until mid-January so I’ll be winging it a bit for the next couple of weeks. I dug up the first month’s training block that Suzan gave me for the 2006 Ironman race so that will give me something to work with.

Not only will I begin to track my training again but I’ll also begin tracking my nutrition today. I’ve taken a break from both since doing the Green Mountain marathon. While it’s been nice not keeping track for a while, I have to admit that I’m looking forward to the structure and focus that will be required.

December 25, 2008

Equipment and lines of credit

It’s been over a month since I gotten a run in because of the “rib incident“. I love to go out and run early on holidays, so this morning I decided to test out the healing and go out for a while. Formal Ironman training starts in a little over a week and I’m antsy to begin to a regular training schedule again.

It was an unusually warm morning with an air temp of 40 degrees but with a pretty strong wind. I was able to wear shorts! Haven’t done that on a Christmas day run in a while.

I was only about out for about 40 minutes and usually no matter the distance I run my mind will wonder across several subjects. I imaging lots of triathletes experience the same thing. This morning was different, all I could think about was equipment and lines of credit?! I tried moving my head to other subjects but to no avail…I had a completely one track line of thinking. To give some perspective, I work for an equipment and business finance company, could that be why?

The rib felt good so I’ll probably try again tomorrow. It will be interesting to if my mind can move on to any other subjects…

December 21, 2008

Listen, add value

listen_l I caught an exchange on Twitter recently that summed up my sales philosophy, both what I have practiced and currently preach in my role as a corporate sales trainer. Listen, add value. The context was referring to successful corporate twitter strategy. You can see this reference mentioned several times in the Twittersphere. It’s such a simple philosophy, useful not only as a twitter corporate strategy, but as a sales strategy in general.

Taking it all in

I consider myself a sales professional, and a pretty good one. Through formal study, self study and experience I’ve formed a belief system about how I approach the sales process. I’ve taken in as much as possible when in comes to sales strategy from the Boiler Room philosophy of Always Be Closing (ABC), to Customer Centered Selling to Spin Selling to Solution Selling. Some made complete sense and I picked up their key points easily, others I had to re-read to figure out what direction the process developer or author was going. Others I quickly found out were ineffective (ABC for example).

Maybe the challenge starts with the company and trickles down to the sales person. David Meerman Scott recently posted a few “Gobbledygook” customer statements and with product descriptions like these, it’s no wonder so many complicated selling strategies have been developed!

Putting it all together

I pulled from what I found useful to me and dropped the rest, trying to put into practice, taking what I believe will be the most effective approach. My latest challenge is taking this belief system and trying to share it with those sales professionals that I train and coach every day. Most of those I train have not been in the sales profession for very long, which is probably both a blessing and a curse, and are trying to form their own belief system that guides how they approach the sales process.

The mistakes I see them making are pretty consistent and ones most new sales people make. Because most don’t have a sales process yet they spew product features and benefits without having an understanding of what the customer needs are. Product features are what they know, so that’s what they talk about.

The challenge I face is giving these relatively inexperienced sales people an easy set of beliefs to follow that can then guide their actions, questions and behavior on a daily basis. That chance tweet I saw on will be my new strategy to give these salespeople what I hope is the guidance they need.

Listen, add value…can’t get much more simple and straight forward than that.

Photo Credit: dotolearn.com