Simple Solutions Often Hide In Plain Sight

These days, useful information comes at us from all angles. Often - and unfortunately - it's cleverly disguised.

Take, for instance, a recent presentation on dealing with haters by Timothy Ferris, author of the wildly popular The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferris spoke this spring at the Next Web '10 event in Amsterdam and uploaded a video recording of his 33-minute presentation to his blog (fourhourworkweek .com/blog).

The sales managers I know would tell me they can't spare half an hour to discover how Ferris deals with people who hate him - and there appear to be a lot of people who hate him. Nor would they take time to get the gist of his presentation by reading a summary of it on Mashable.com.

But if they took the time watch the video or read the Mashable.com summary, they'd discover that what Ferriss has learned about coping with haters could benefit any sales rep who gets frustrated with negative reaction from prospects. (Beginning with point #1: It doesn't matter how many people don't get it. What matters is how many people do.)

My guess is that information overload results in most of us missing 70% of the stuff that can truly help us improve workplace performance - the stuff that works. The concept behind our annual "What Works" issue when we launched it three years ago was, and continues to be, to present simple and instantly actionable ideas that will help sales managers improve the performance of their sales teams.

We know you read your own industry publications to find out what's trending in your specific line of work, so we aim to bring you broader sales management ideas that will move the needle. Many of them are hiding in plain sight. And much of what we present in our print issue is expounded upon here online, so be sure to visit us often for important links and longer versions of what we publish in print.

Mike Murrell
Publisher, SalesForceXP