Where is good news in all of this? Well, great news is that if you begin using new, innovative, "Information Age" methods for prospecting, you'll be miles ahead of your competitors who are wasting their time annoying people with cold calls. In this age of Internet and vast communication networks, why on earth would anyone knock on doors or make cold phone calls to look for business?

Think of power at your fingertips: there are literally dozens of ways to use Web and e-mail to let idea of Permission Marketing do its magic. Allow customers to raise their hands and let you know they're interested. Begin finding, implementing and reaping benefits of this bold, new Information Age we are in. Your competitors will be ones standing in bankruptcy court and explaining their "do-not-call" violations to government while you are happily taking orders.

With business world in its present state, I really don't see how salespeople can afford to keep fooling away their time on old ideas that were once right but are now fatally wrong. It is this very feature of capitalism that is causing salespeople, managers and organizations to fail in record numbers. Capitalism is essentially "creative destruction." In other words, capitalism is a perpetual cycle of destroying old, less-efficient businesses and ideas and replacing them with new, more efficient ones. People and companies are clinging to old, obsolete ideas and are being dragged down to failure by them. Yet they still won't let go. I think reason they can't let go is simply because it wasn't all that long ago that they really did have right answers. It reminds me of a story I once heard about Albert Einstein when he was a professor. One of his student assistants who was preparing for an incoming class said, "Professor Einstein, what test are we giving them?" To which Einstein replied, "The same test we gave them last week." Bewildered, student assistant replied, "But Professor Einstein, we already gave that test." Einstein simply said, "Yes, but answers are different this week."

The bottom line is that answers are different. The rules have changed. Time is running out for those who do not adapt to new rules. As Napoleon Hill put it so well, "Whenever a nation, a business institution, or an individual ceases to change and settles into a rut of routine habits, some mysterious power enters and smashes setup, breaks up old habits, and lays foundation for new and better habits."

If you're not achieving sales success you desire, perhaps it is time for you to lay foundation for new and better habits.