I just read an article in the August issue of Business2Business called “MUST! The crunch came–here’s the selling drill” Too bad it is not available online I’d love to link to it.
There are a few things in the article that hit home…
“Go out and talk to 100 prospects as quickly as possible”. This is repeated many times throughout the article. Essentially the author explains that now is the time to suck it up and get out there and sell. And that we need to do this on top of all the other things we must do. That means talking to current customers and new prospects. This makes a lot of sense. In a tough economy we have to be aggressive, we can’t sit back and wait for people to come to us. This may sound counter intuitive to my usual mantra of life balance, but like I said, sometimes you need to suck it up and get it done. Plus, this doesn’t have to mean you throw out your balance, it just has to be a more defined effort.
Another important point from the article is the fact that we have to get everyone involved in the process, which I think this is especially important for small organizations. And this means everyone from top to bottom. The key is networking. Smaller companies have to have the mindset that even the technicians need to think in terms of sales. Everyone knows people, but do they know your business? For example, look at the different organizations that the members of the company belong to. Professional and leisure. It is important that people in these organization know our business because when they are looking for a product or service, where do you think they naturally go first?? That’s right people they know…
The simple fact is whether or not we think we good at sales, or even whether we like sales or not, business depends on it. So, let’s get everyone involved and get out there and start spreading the word.
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