With everything going on around us…the pressures of the end of the year sales, the craziness of December in general, the senseless tragedy in Connecticut, and the continued stupidity of the party-entrenched Washington politicians carrying on ivory tower debates over what will determine the economic stability of our country for years to come, it’s hard sometimes to maintain focus on the things that really count.

So, what counts?

• Connecticut rams home that family counts most of all since in an instant, life disappears with only disassembled pieces of memories to hold on to.  If there needs to be a lesson out of this, it’s that for this Christmas season, we need to something extra with our families.
• Gun control now counts louder than ever.  As a gun owner, for all of the reasons that will now be more hotly debated than ever before, I do believe that people should be allowed to own guns.  That having been said, there’s absolutely no reason to continue to allow automatic assault weapons or high capacity magazine clips to be purchased.  Most probably, once again, our boys and girls in Washington will merely kick the can down the road on this.  It’s at times like this when true leadership really counts, and we’ll see over the next two months if anyone stands up for what is the right thing to do.   
• The profession of Sales counts…also more than ever.  Let’s assume we somehow manage to avoid driving off the cliff at full Thelma & Louise throttle, then 2013 needs to be the year of economic change.  We do a lot of surveys in our business, and we will hold our annual CEO Forum in late January to once again test the market as to what really counts among business leaders.  For the past three years, the overwhelming response from our surveys has been, “ I need to increase the productivity of my salespeople”.  
  
  Ok, we’ve heard that, year after year after year, so in 2013, what are you going to actually do that will dramatically change the velocity of your revenue dollars per salesperson?  What’s going to move you from saying “I need to increase the effectiveness of my salespeople”, to congratulating them on their 25% and 35% increases in their own productivity come the end of the December, 2013?   The very good news is that today there’s a long list of practices, processes and technology tools that can actually enable your salespeople so that when you’re asking yourself twelve months from now that question of “What Counts?”, you can emphatically say that sales effectiveness counts.
• and finally, Christmas counts.  I'd like to extend a very sincere Merry Christmas...and, of course, Good Selling as you squeeze in those last minute orders in the next couple of days.

Jack,
Head Coach