Here’s a first.

Jim Seybert giving sales advice is like Jim Seybert giving golf lessons.
But I’ve been collecting ideas about managing my sales process and have come to a point where it helps my thought process to let the ideas flow through my fingers.  It’s one thing to think about the ideas, and quite another to cogitate them into some semblance of order by writing them down.  Ben Franklin did that.  He used poetry to help him develop ideas. (You can read more about that in my Counter Intelligence column from this past July).
What I’ve learned about managing my sales process:
Most importantly, I’ve learned that not all potential customers are the same.  That should come as no great surprise, but I tend to work them all in the same way – rather haphazardly.  I don’t have a system, although this exercise will result in one.  Every prospect gets a customized approach, depending on some vaporous perception of what they might respond to.  Some get an aggressive pitch and others the opposite, with no apparent reasoning behind either one.
The result of this activity is a lot of activity without a lot of results.  I waste time chasing prospects who will probably never engage my services and that take me away–mentally, physically and emotionally–from prospects who might be interested but haven’t had an opportunity to explore any further.