Despite the growing disdain for walk-in-the-door cold calling, there are plenty of high activity sales companies (even industries) that conduct sales blitzes to generate a wave of fresh leads for their new business developers.

Read on for some great best practices to make them successful.

Teams. I've always had good luck bringing approximately 8-10 people in for a sales blitz focused on one individual's sales territory. The 8-10 are paired up into teams (usually a senior sales professional with a newer one), and at the kick-off meeting early in the morning we announce the teams and they give themselves a fun name. Each team gets a binder with the next two helpful aids.

Maps & Lists. Each team receives a map of their sales blitz area. Sure, they may know the area, but you want to avoid overlap as much as possible. The teams also receive hard copy lists of existing customers, so no calls are made on them. And each of the other teams' pairing and cell phone numbers are included.

Goals & Tracking. Each team also commits to a minimum number of calls, good leads, and hot leads. Since the meeting ends at 7:45 am and the recap meeting is held at 4:30 pm, a good number of calls for my industries has always been around 50. Some kill that number, some miss it by a bit. Depending on your industry, your numbers may be well off this mark. As for tracking, each team fills out a lead sheet for every company they call on, even the poor leads, so a history can be generated in the host rep's database.

Check-in Phone Calls. The fun comes when teams check in to find out how the other teams are doing in terms of number of calls and, most importantly, one-call closes. As the day progresses, they start calling each other directly. This is where the competitive side of your salespeople starts making things interesting.

Recap Meeting. You've got to have a recap meeting. Each time has to be held accountable for their efforts for the day. They should report their number of total calls, hot leads, good leads, and a couple highlights of the day. We have also given each participant a token of our appreciation for participating, and the winning team (most calls or most sales generated from one-call closes) wins a prize.

Sales blitzes are a fun way to pair sales professionals who generally go it alone while generating leads for their colleagues. Good luck with yours.

One of my early sales trainers said, “Gary, people hate to make decisions and that’s why we have to make them for them.”

He may have overstated it a bit, but the point is well taken.

Sometimes it’s called the ABC’s of Selling: Always Be Closing.

And this means constantly asking for an order, for the yes, for the signature on the dotted line.

As a seller, you may think that asking for approval is premature, that you must set into place a lot of precursory information, and sometimes this is the case.

If you want to sell a nuclear reactor, for instance, there are lots of steps that must be taken before you’ll get the final green light.

Still, you can establish your EXPECTATION that you’ll be chosen to provide whatever it is that you’re selling.

Example: When I placed my seminars at forty universities across the country, I never asked my contacts WHETHER they wanted to sponsor them. Within the first 30 seconds of our first conversation I did ask, “How would we go about offering this course at your university?”

I presumed that we’d be doing business together, and now it was simply a matter of how.

I made the decision for them, you could say. That’s closing a deal without explicitly asking for a yes or no, sometimes referred to as assumptive selling.

But if that approach isn’t available, you can and must be explicit. Here are three tips for effective closing:

(1) Keep It Simple, Stupid! Known as the KISS method, this means make your offer succinct and easily understood.

(2) Close early in the encounter. You can always back pedal and provide more information if you must.

(3) Close often. One close may not do it. Ask as many times at it takes to get a yes or to determine that the prospect is not close-able.

In future articles we’ll discuss the best language to use when closing.