6.  Not everyone is wired to leave the safety of their foxholes, join the charge, and take the hill. It is your prerogative to shield your scary, Rambo peddler side from animals, children, and the elderly.

7.  It is a peddler’s prerogative to create a solid process that works. It is also your prerogative to be careful when you hop on the process bandwagon and not let an act of self-help turn into self-mutilation.

8.  You better be a funny bastard if you want to be a good peddler. It is your prerogative to figure out how funny you want to be. Be as funny as you should be, less isn’t enough, more is too much. It’s all a riddle anyway!

9.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to take a break guiltlessly. Rest, recharge, and come back swinging. It is essential not to let anyone but you determine when you need a breather and when you should take it.

10.  When you meet folks with bad ’tudes, make no mistake, THEY WILL WEAKEN YOU! It is absolutely your prerogative to remove them from your reality. SHUN THEM!

11.  A right of passage for any great peddler is being formally stripped of an account, thrown out of an account, or quitting an account verily. Good for you. Bravo!

12.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to bail on a forced fit. Whenever you see one coming, quickly parse it. It is usually an overactive imagination, desperation, or stupidity. Whatever it is, you have to throw
the flag and make the call. Sit the peddler down and bring them back to reality.

13.  It is your prerogative not to take anything that happens in the sales process PERSONALLY. When bad stuff happens, it is your prerogative to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and straighten your clothes (doing your best Charlie Chaplin, of course). Proceed to go about your day.

14.  It is your prerogative to forget the spotlight and focus on the details of the deal. It is your prerogative to realize that that’s the way to preempt rejection, and that your spectacular moment is when you have cashed your commission check and are buying pizza and beer!

15.  Repeat after me: It is OK to be a peddler. It is OK to sell for a living. It is OK to tell prospects and customers that I want to sell them my product for cash. It is OK to ask for an order. And, above all, it is OK to treat my prospects and customers right and be true. It is all OK. (Psst! You can fire your psychiatrist now. It’s all okey-dokey!)

16.  You have chosen to be a peddler and it’s your prerogative to enhance or detract from the general world view of your chosen profession. It is under your control, so don’t be a featherhead.

17.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to realize that you are never going to sell anything to the wrong company or the wrong person at the wrong time. It ain’t ever gonna happen!

18.  It is your prerogative to be a peddler who prospects and customers can rely on to look out for them and their interests. Make it your business: to know the score.

19.  The world of the peddler is an ongoing morality play and you are either a champion of the good side or the dark side. It’s your prerogative to choose to champion the good. Remember, right is right!

20.  It is always a peddler’s prerogative to avoid the dance of death. If you are associated with a company that is unscrupulous, immoral, or corrupt, DITCH!

21.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to be a mystic of the corporate world!

22.  It is your prerogative to remind yourself and your management that selling isn’t a chess match or a 12-step program. It’s an ongoing dialogue, an easy conversation.

23.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to think big and outside the box. To dream about taking a little local deal with a lot of goodness and turn it into a monster of global business. Think big! Really big! BIG, BIG, BIG!

24. Marketing in most companies is a hit or miss proposition. It is your prerogative to listen politely to their spin and then figure out for yourself how to sell your product. There’s no earthly reason for letting a bunch of marketeers hold a perfectly good product HOSTAGE!

25.  It’s your peddler’s prerogative to believe that it’s not IF you’ll get the deal, but WHEN.

26.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to learn to be patient and suffer gladly for your deals.

27.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to map his or her company, and figure out who can get things done, who can’t, who won’t, and who always says nope.

28.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to enthusiastically embrace anyone or anything that moves him or her closer to a sale, and to wholeheartedly ignore anyone or anything that doesn’t.

29.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to demand that the company makes it easy for peddlers to sell and easy for customers to buy.

30.  It is your prerogative to truly understand the paradox of using a bazooka to kill a mosquito. It’s not the best use of a resource, but it sure as hell gets the job done. It is also your prerogative to share your high-impact weapons with your fellow peddlers.

31.  It is your prerogative to classify your executive group into the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to facilitate a good and meaningful relationship with the good executives. The relationships you create will spawn an awesome selling team when you need it.

32.  It is your prerogative to realize that you must verily, and I DO MEAN VERILY, respect and honor the administrators in your life. If you do, you have a shot at success. If you don’t, you will take the longest of walks off the shortest of piers.

33.  If you are a hunter, it is your prerogative to make a mint and be the best individual contributor you can be. If a company can’t handle that, it is your prerogative to mosey on down the road, find a better position, or start your own business and buy them!

34.  If you are a farmer, it is your prerogative to go as far as you wish up the corporate ladder. If you like, you can work your way right up to chairman and CEO.

35.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to make sure management understands that he or she prefers to be paid rather than praised. It is your prerogative to suggest they save the money spent on recognition meetings and sign some checks for the best peddlers.

36.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to advise the marketer he deems relevant (the higher the better) that he will be taking him or her out to the field. It is also the peddler’s prerogative to tell said marketer that resistance will be futile, as he will take him or her kicking and screaming out of the building by any means necessary. It is the peddler’s prerogative to delight muchly as the customer reads the marketer the riot act.

37.  It is every peddler’s prerogative to discover who knows the most about the product he or she is selling. It is also your prerogative to engage those folks in your deals, overtly or covertly.

38.  It is your prerogative to remember that every product has a product manager and you have a one in three chance of it being an enlightened and engaging one. It is also your prerogative to find out fast if you are blessed with a good one or in need of an alternate strategy.

39.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to avoid getting stuck in magical reality and not to be led astray by unreasonable hope, quiet desperation, or fanciful, wishful thinking, as it is the quickest way to get your ass in a sling!

40.  There are two kinds of accounts: right accounts and wrong accounts. It is your prerogative to pursue right accounts until the cows come home. It is your unequivocal duty not to kid yourself and waste time on wrong accounts. Every peddler knows up from down and right from wrong. Stick with right accounts and ditch wrong accounts.

41.  It is your prerogative as a peddler to understand the entire history of the company, its products and services. It’s your prerogative to know why and how they were created. It is important to understand the historical perspective so that you become an authority and can chronicle the product inside your head. It is your absolute prerogative to get this information from the people in the know. It is not their prerogative to put you off, ever.

42.  When you find a target or prospect that’s “right,” it is absolutely your peddler’s prerogative to immediately start to see and think of them as a customer, they just haven’t realized it yet! So be it.

43.  When prospecting and finding deals it is your prerogative to never say never on any idea or presuppose that this or that will not work until you have actually tried it out by picking up the phone or getting in front of and talking to the prospect. If you think you can’t then you can’t! This
kind of predictive attitude is stupid. Says me!

44.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to leave nothing to chance, be ever vigilant, monitor everything, and maintain a meaningful dialogue with all key players—inside your prospect’s company and inside your company!

45.  Never, never, never try and be a techie with a techie. He or she knows you are not and will think you are a dope if you try. 24.  Marketing in most companies is a hit or miss proposition. It is your prerogative to listen politely to their spin and then figure out for yourself
how to sell your product. There’s no earthly reason for letting a bunch of marketeers hold a perfectly good product HOSTAGE!

46.  As a peddler with a qualified deal, it is your prerogative to first, find the navigator and, second determine the reason or compelling scenario that creates a sense of urgency about doing the deal.

47.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to summarize the product and opportunity to every new face that appears during a meeting. This revolving door lets you reinforce the fit among the other participants. Turn a negative into a positive whenever you can.

48.  It is your prerogative to meet with your counterparts at all of your competitors. It’s an essential part of understanding and familiarizing yourself with the market. It’s extending your web. It shows you are a smart peddler. It’s OK to be friends with the peddlers you are competing
against. Remember, it’s a very small world.

49.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to make sure the prospect understands the value propositions. Anything less than 100% will proportionately decrease your chances of closing the business.

50.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to avoid fighting for control of a deal, and make a rational call, deal by deal, whether he or she or the prospect is going to run the deal. When the prospect leads the deal, the good peddler remains in the game, participating and influencing accordingly. The smart peddler makes sure he or she is always sitting at the table.

51.  Peddling is about moving deals down the line. It is the peddler’s prerogative to be ever vigilant about any detail, no matter how trivial, that could slow down a deal, and to make it his or her number one priority to exert his or her influence to keep the deal moving. It is also the peddler’s prerogative to be anal retentive about every aspect of his or her deal. The devil is in the details.

52.  It is the peddler’s prerogative not to be intimidated by the closing myth. Closing is simply the end of the selling process. When the last question is answered, you are done and the deal is closed.

53.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to make sure that as a deal gets done, it is a good and fair deal for folks on both sides of the table. Bad deals always come back to haunt the perpetrating party. This is the karma of peddlery. Don’t mess with it!

54.  As a peddler, it is your prerogative to choose only good deals and then set the tone for getting them done. You can let it be known that to do business with you, a prospect must be COOL!

55.  If you take the time to ask all the key questions in each phase of the selling process, it is your prerogative to take the time to listen heartily to the answers. Don’t ever ask a question and then tune out or interrupt the prospect as he or she is answering. Save that for your sales manager!

56.  It is your peddler’s prerogative to get to the verbal as fast as you can. A verbal from a reliable source means you’re in! Enjoy the verbal, as it usually means you are getting the business. It also means it is time to buckle down and put this puppy to bed.

57.  Pricing models should be simple and easy to explain to anyone— and I do mean ANYONE. If your mother can’t understand how much your products costs, then marketing has gone overboard once again. It is your peddler’s prerogative to haul them back into the boat.

58.  When involved in contract negotiations, it is your prerogative not to think you are a lawyer and negotiate legal terms and conditions. Join the business bargaining, but keep your mouth closed during any legal wrangling. We all know you are blessed and wonderful, but you ain’t a lawyer, bucko, so cool your jets.

59.  During negotiations, never take no as an answer until you hear it three times. Folks who say no three times really mean it. Less than that, however, and they may change their minds. It is your peddler’s prerogative to follow the three-times rule and make sure no means no!

60.  During the last part of the closing cycle, keep everything grounded in reality. Prospects can lose perspective and believe they can get more than is fair or reasonable. Keep their reality quotient at 42. Search me, it’s that Zen thing again!

61.  It is the peddler’s prerogative to know when the heck to close his or her yap and stop selling. It is hard to do. Selling is a peddler’s natural state. But when you have the deal, for the love of Pete, remember to stop selling. Stop selling. STOP SELLING!

62.  The deal isn’t done until you have cashed your commission check. If you are not using that money to buy yourself a pizza and some beer, you can’t allow yourself to think all is fine. You have to make triple sure that the P.O. is getting through the bureaucracy at the customers company
and then at yours. It’s your responsibility no matter what anyone tries to tell you. Don’t foul up!

63.  Your word is all you have. If your company makes a commitment, that is your commitment; its word is your word. It is your peddler’s prerogative to fight tooth and nail to keep your word and your good standing. If prospects and customers can’t trust your word, you are dead and so it will go with your company as well.

64.  It is your prerogative to write your VERY own Peddler’s Prerogative so that we can publish it on our website and you can share your wisdom and peddler observations with your selling brethren!