I have devoted thousands of hours in the last five years learning how to master cold calling, lead generation and inside sales. I have spoke with hundreds of CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, business owners, business professionals, decision makers, decision influencers and gatekeepers.

I'm amazed when I hear sales people and managers tell me how slow summer is for their business.

How much time and money do you devote to your company's sales pipeline?

Ask yourself this question - when you call a prospect or client back to close a sale, do you open your call up with, "I'm just calling to follow up..."?

For those of you who have been through training with me, or have purchased any of my training material, you know that I am BIG on preparation.

I want to expand on telephone scripts a little bit because I've been getting so many emails asking how to be effective in today's market.

If I gave you a pencil and asked you to sell it, how would you go about it?

Why is it that 80% of the sales and revenue in any company or industry is made by the Top 20% of the producers? And, more importantly, what you begin doing today to move into that elite group?

What are you doing to succeed in today's economic climate? If you're like most sales reps (80%) you're probably showing up and grumbling about the recession, hoping you don't get fired before it ends, and hoping you can make enough sales to pay the rent.

Here are the three things they are doing, and that you can do, too, to make sure you are successful in 2009: