Tip #8
You can turn slow times into busy times. It is interesting that when the economy GDP drops a couple of points many people think that there is no business to be had. This is not true. Businesses go through cycles of expansion and contraction just as the economy. When some sectors are contracting you need to find the ones in your area that are expanding. To quote a great stock picker “There is always a bull market somewhere” and it is your job to find it and sell to those companies. Read your business journal, join a lead club, join the local Chamber of Commerce, and network with the other Partners in the other divisions in your area.
One technique that I used when things got slow overall was to sit down and call everyone of my customers and tell them that I would be in their area next week and asked if they wanted to see me. What I found was that usually 4-8 of my old accounts were doing something and wanted me to come by. After visiting them and working on their projects I suddenly found myself busy again. It also reminded all of my customers that I was still out there and interested in them.
There are great tools today that we did not have in our day and one is the Gold Mine Software. You need to load all of your customers and prospects into this database and develop and launch selling tracks for each one of them. This will keep yourself in front of your customers for free and will produce business.
Remember that it is important to know that you should give your customers information to help them improve and don’t just try to sell them something.
Tip #7
Making sales calls is critical to your success. Staying on the street during selling hours and doing your paperwork before and after this time block is what the top 20% of sales professionals do to be the best. Selling requires that we go out and meet with your clients for any number of reasons. It does not mean sitting in the office and taking orders and thinking you are having a good time. You need to prospect to find accounts to replace those you will naturally loose and to sell more and more into your existing accounts. Studies have shown that you will have an easier time selling into every department in your existing account and your complete product line into these same accounts than trying to crack a new account. Remember it takes an average of five sales calls on the same person to make a sale but to an existing account selling additional items takes many times fewer calls.
Tip #6
Beware of the huge sale. Many times during your career you will receive an order for a huge job. This is good but it could also be bad. I have seen more than one good salesperson spend weeks on a huge job, neglect their every day customers and then after loosing the project find they have also lost most of their base business. Likewise I have seen the same thing happen when the sales person receives a huge order but at the end of the year they find they did not make that much more as their base business suffered and the large commission only resulted in making up for this loss and was not plus business. You need to be aware of this rule and work the job with spare time and not neglect your base business so that if you loose it you are fine and if you get the order you can bank it as extra money.
