Everyone knows the economy is
bad and getting worse. This year, 2009,
is going to be rough, many businesses are going to fail while others will
launch and grow.
Marketing budgets are being
cut, staff is being cut, and sales goals are being raised and you have to do
more with less. However, this is NOT the
time to cut the Training Budget or the Membership Budget.
Training - A successful sales team
or business owner stays involved with continuous training, keeping their
prospecting, and sales skills sharp. This is the one place that the small
business owner pinches their pennies, finding no value in quality training. It
is important to keep new material in front of both the business owner and the
sales teams. Now is not the time
to stop learning more about how to be a more effective sales
person, how to implement referral systems that will generate higher referred
prospects and how to close more deals. Most
of the business world walk around with the I ALREADY KNOW About Networking and
SALES mind set, but the truth is, most have barley scratched the surface of the
potential. It will be the successful
sales person, who knows how to get in front of high-level prospects
consistently, that will survive.
If you are not staying in the constant conversation of IMPROVEMENT then you end up like the US Auto Companies, wondering how the rest of the world passed you by.
Memberships - Business Owners and
Sales Managers alike begin to pull back on the networking groups and
organizations where their teams have been spending time. A better result would
be to diversify the organizations and make sure that you and your team are
spending time in the right places with the right people and measure their
results.
Make sure you are spending your time in the right places, with the right people, doing the high value activities that will generate results.
Diversify, join close contact referral groups like BNI or PRE, a service group like Rotary,
and an open contact group like the chamber or Rainmakers or women’s group
like NAWBO. CAUTION: More is not better, there comes a point of
diminished returns, if you have sales team members split them up.
Hold your teams accountable, accountability breeds results. Track
your sales and track your networking activities, what gets tracked gets done.
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