5:03

Final ten or so minutes in day, I see the next day.  The aim, more movement.  More writing, more moments of education and sight.  How to build, and further narrate my story at this company, starting my own agency solely build around positivity, storytelling, connectedness.  Tomorrow I’ll stay on the phone, go through leads, and think of creative ways to attract business.  And just like that, I have another illustrate hop into my head.

300 words a day, on the company.  On what I do, on what Sonic does for businesses… 300 words, and first thing.  Get here early, every day.  Can’t tomorrow as I have the Leads Group meeting at 7, but right after than, come here… voice, presence, genuine world composed from the two.  That’s all this is, anything in business, not so much what you “make it”, but what you saw before your movement.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

7/15/19

When prospecting I notice myself saying too much.  The same way people talk too much about wine, on both sides of the bar.  Less… it’s not only more it’s what’s appropriate, it’s what works.  Let the other person talk.  Ask them questions.  This isn’t sales device, it’s sales reality, sales remedy.

Today has been educating, on a number of notes, and all yay-saying.  It’s not selling yourself, or even Sonic, it’s showing eagerness to learn about the other person.  More than rapport, but CONNECTION.

Tomorrow’s new, another tablet.  So that’s where my focus is.  My sales notes compiling.  What do I do with them.  Have no idea right now.  They’re doing something to me, for me, with me.  Sell whatever it is you’re selling like you’re talking about whatever your most elevated interest is.  For me, of course, it’s wine and literature.  So… speak of Sonic as it’s a character, one that’s colorful and fun, educating and remedying.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

…yes more coffee.  Doesn’t cost, and he should.  Presses button, small cup than the last.  Sets budget for week.  8am, should get in shower, or not.  Just ready self by washing face, putting comb through hair, shirt and sweater and ready.  Mike doesn’t know what else to write about the morning.  4am wake, but he’s written that how many times.  Exactly, he says.  Knows today has to be antithetical to prior days, carries.  Write everything down.  Literally everything, even if painful.  No wine during week, only running and early ups.  To gym like his friend Abraham, another with more than impressive system.  Mike sets his mind to running, to travel, to photography.  Needing more, he looks at his phone, shots taken from yest–  Mike realizes he left his camera in Chris’ car.  Shit, he thinks.  He hates it when things like this occur but then realizes it’s not a deal at all…

mikemadiganLeave a comment

wine page

7/3/19

Went out on my own, “Feet on the Street” as they say in this part of the company.  Just introducing myself, as I knew there was a chance of running into current clients.  And I did.  No deterrence.  This whole day thinking about selling and why some get anxiety when it comes to selling, and the possibility of conversion, that you might or might not sell.  Again, I learn on wine ideology and methodology.  Everything is from wine, for me.  Talk to people as you would if you were having a glass of SB with them on a desk in some warm weather, or sipping a stainless Chard on a dock somewhere in the San Juan Islands, or on a boat around the islands.  Do your job less, I said to myself walking up to that first corporate building in on of the Fountain Grove business building spots.

Department head sent out an email saying, basically telling us, that early departure at 3 is fine.  Told us to get the heck out of here and enjoy our weekend.  Which I more than appreciate as in the wine industry that rarely happens.  Every last dollar, every last dollar the mentality rather than making sure your sales force is satisfied with everything from day-to-day to how they see themselves in their role.  I’ll leave in a bit, I guess.  Go write somewhere maybe for a bit before meeting family in Windsor for the baseball game and whatever else is planned.  Looking around my new desk, and my place has already been punctuated.  Wine… wine… don’t fixate on the overwhelming population and propulsion of new terms and products and surrounding language.  Just see the person in front of you, I tell myself and offer to anyone reading this in any kind of sales post.  Just talk to as many people as you can, record everything, follow up, and don’t stop moving.  Not sure what else to say other than that, and I don’t want to talk about sales for this whole piece but narrating who you are and what you’re doing is nearly the entirety of what we think of as “sales”.

Wine taught me all this.  And the industry having forced me into disgust with it instructed me to gut-trust and find something else.  I did, and here I am, but still with wine-wound principles and sight, the Road to my Equilibrium purveying all the poetry and prose but more so poetry and music this writer ever need.  What will I have to do when with my own wines, but go door to door, just handing them out not really selling or even narrating anything, just saying hi and saying my name a couple times and handing a bottle of wine to whomever’s in front of me.

Office getting quiet.  I can tell people have left.  Think I’ll send my EOD in a minute then depart, myself.  Get a glass of something, somewhere.  Why does Sauvignon Blanc always sound good, and always sound like the most optimal and appropriate, optimally appropriate varietal and style, feel and song and vinified ride?  Don’t know, but I can see the glass in front of me, and by some odd extension see myself rising in this department far faster than anyone before me, and even faster than I now see myself ascending.  Why?  I’m not selling.  I refuse to sell.  I’ll only connect, talk, educate, create.  So many overthink sales and talk themselves out of it and into some undeserved low self-estimation.  The creativity and conversations will illuminate opportunity, and renewing zenith.

mikemadiganLeave a comment

wine page

7/2/19

EOD, and Zinfandel.  Something I don’t often do. Usually a Cab, or Pinot, or some red blend.  But no, I’m drinking Zin.  One my sister made, a 2016 from three separate vineyard blocks.  Glass next to me, not yet tasted or even nosed.  Had past vintages, but not this one.  Day 2 of new post at Sonic, fin.  Today was information, products and definitions, certain services and approaches.  I’m not overwhelmed so much as I am in acknowledgement of what I’m doing, what this new character entails.  Not thinking about it now, and not ‘cause I don’t want to, I want this wine to speak to me, tell me something about me and my wined self that I don’t know.  That I’ve never thought of before.  Like what.  I don’t know, clown.  I haven’t tasted her yet.  What does she want, what did she see in ’16 at those 3 vineyard sites, sights.  MY sight now looking at her in the glass, or stemless plastic glass, cup, goblet, bowl.  I’m overthinking, something I’ve been trying to combat quite viciously of late, but how can I when thinking is my opiate.  Not making me smarter or any more complicated than the next human but certain one of developing activity.  Who knows if I’ll ever jettison this trait of mine, this me of me.

 

Tiring but I can’t halt in my page assault. Need visit pages from vault.  Haven’t written in days like this, seems like months, like I’ve let my writing life just fly away like some pet bird I don’t love any more.  No, No, I tell the page.  Wine still there not being touched.  I’m too into the room, its quiet, the kids upstairs asleep already (already, they did go to bed rather late but it didn’t take them long to drop into dreams), and me here, with these keys, the next day ahead of me and the Napa trip literally hours away as I see it.  First touch of Zin’s figure and she voices her voice with stern step.  There is no waver in her writing.  She urges I the like profess and practice and perpetuate.  Near one minute after sip 1 I still hear her sing, feel that echo and octave.  There’s something more to this tenor and talk that I can ever measure.  So….  I’m here, in the Room, writing to a Zin. I refrain from fixating on the Zin and my usual turn away from Zin as this is different—or not different but some how a varied climate from composition usual.

I can already see myself walking into the office tomorrow, having pages written from waking more than early.  4am, god hour, where the room is my deity and me but a follower and proselytizer, not so much spreading the word but speaking about the hour, what I did.  The office noticing something about me, my pages on my sleeves and skin, jabbing from my smile.  The office, Sonic, teaching me sight, how to confront the page void, that I don’t need fear it nor feel shamed for not touching it in a couple days.  Feel self closer to the Zin, and he smile, her movement which is more than just simple left-right, side to side, circular or triangulated shifts arbitrary.  More than a stroll or sway, it’s a month massaged inside of a day.

mikemadiganLeave a comment