What can you do for your business when the clients are knocking down your door? How can you learn new skills to improve your business and get more clients?
So, what do you do if your business is slower during some months?
Yes, you can make more cold calls, run more advertising or stand on the street corner waving a huge sale sign. Or, if it's going to be slow no matter what you do, then how about planning for next year? How about taking some career development courses/classes/seminars? How about boning up on your computer skills to find out how you can be more efficient in your business? What about doing things that take up a bunch of time when you're busy and stocking up on them (stocking shelves, printing and folding mailings, sending out packets of info, writing articles or press releases, whatever?). Volunteer and create awareness and exposure for your business.
Or better yet - get on that marketing plan for 2009! You know you don't want to be hap hazzardly marketing or throwing money out to see what sticks next year - if you plan out what you do it will be so much more effective and well managed - this means you'll get better results and make more money!!!
Instead of sitting around worrying, get better at what it is that you do. Whether you are a direct salesperson or not I would definitely recommend working on your sales skills; listen to a speaker or take a sales class. Everyone can benefit from some new sales techniques in their business whether they sell a product or service to the consumer or whether they simply deal with customer service issues over the phone - it comes in handy.
If you don't know where to go to attend a seminar that would be of interest to you in your business try visiting a few local small biz development or county sites. If sales isn't your forte, see what else you can learn to better yourself and your business. Here are a few sites I know about; however there are probably more in your specific field too.
- www.pttrain.com
- www.learningexchange.com
- www.natsem.com
- www.salestrainingcamp.com
- www.score.org
Or you can try researching and reading online. I recommend the following sites for info, articles and great newsletters to subscribe to by email:
- www.businessownersideacafe.com
- www.briantracy.com
- www.entrepreneur.com
- www.entreworld.org
- www.sbdcsierra.org
- www.salestrainer.com
Here are some books on sales that have been recommended to me by sales trainers:
- The New Science of Selling and Persuasion: How Smart Companies and Great Salespeople Sell - Bill Brooks
- The Patterson Principles of Selling - Jeffrey Gitomer
- Knock-Out Marketing, Powerful strategies to punch up your sales - Jack Ferreri
- Public Relations Marketing, Making a splash without much cash - Stephanie Seacord
- Grow Your Business, Strategies to help you successfully manage your business - Mark Henricks
- Selling with Integrity - Sharon Drew Morgan
- If you're not Outselling, You're Being Outsold - Michael St. Larence & Steve Johnson
If you would like to improve your sales with a sales professional in person, I can refer you to and some across the country. I have also coached clients on how to improve their sales approaches and closing ratios. This also goes for cold calling scripts, direct mail letter development and much more to improve your overall sales.
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