NUMBER 1: Resolve NOT to become a victim of hard times! No, this isn’t a motivational post, well, maybe a little. If you are going to thrive and not just survive, you need to get your head screwed on straight. Develop and maintain the right mindset. Accept this from the start: gas isn’t going to get any cheaper and we all going to have to lump it and accept the increased cost of doing business.
Remember, we are all in the same boat. Even the big guys are feeling the pinch. In fact, small businesses, like mine, are really at a considerable advantage since we can quickly cut back on waste and we can manage our cost of selling and closing new business. Look around your business community and identify business networking opportunity groups such as BNI (Business Network International) Chapters. Go to www.bni.com to locate one of the 3,000 chapters in North America. Read my last post: Let the Arabs Drink Their Oil to learn more about this wonderful organization. Plus, make more efficient use of your business day.
Yesterday, I attended for the first time, The Coffee Club, an excellent local, weekly networking meeting in Orlando, organized and managed by Insight Marketing Group. Visit www.InsightMG.com for more information. I met 80 other business professionals who like me, were there to expand their networking reach in the growing Central Florida Business Community. The bottom line: plan to identify and attend one networking group meeting, weekly.
NUMBER 2: Change the way you prospect for new business. Resolve to become a more skilled practioner of technology tools and identify your core group of best prospects. Develop a Profile of the characteristics of your most profitable best customers. Begin by reviewing and analyzing your existing customers. For example, what makes them your best customers? They order frequently; they pay on time; they praise your services, products and your sales staff.
Most importantly, when conducting this review and analysis, identify the job title, not the name, of the decision-maker who decides whether to buy from you or your competition. ID their industries. For example, wholesalers, retailers, manufacturers, B2B or B2C professional business types such as LLC and PA.
Then, call each of your best customers and ask what trade and professional associations they are members of? Next, go to your public library and request from the Reference Desk librarian a copy of the N.T.P.A. Directory (National Trade and Professional Associations Directory). Why? Because you want to find a local chapter of these trade and professional associations. Why? So, you can attend one of their monthly meetings to meet other best prospect decision-makers, just like your best customers you identified in your Profiling process. The NTPA Directory is an alphabetical directory of over 8,000 trade and professional associations. It includes complete information about each association including their website URLs. Here’s an example of how I used this invaluable FREE directory and this process to acquire 43 new clients in 1990.
One of my best clients at that time was a leading cellular services provider. My decision-making local contact was the Sales and Marketing VP. Larry was a member of SMEI (Sales & Marketing Executives International) headquartered, at that time in Cleveland, OH. Since I’m a sales prospecting trainer and consultant, attending a local chapter meeting of SMEI where 40-50 other local Marketing VP’s and Sales Managers were in attendance would be a golden opportunity to prospect for new clients.
One of the indices in the back of the NTPA Directory is a Subject Listing. It lists all the associations by subject category. Since Sales & Marketing are keywords, necessary for me to identify decision-makers for my services, I turned to the Sales & Marketing Subject Index. SMEI was one of 62 associations listed under this subject heading. I photocopied this list and returned to the A-Z listing in the front of the directory where I looked up each association with Sales and/or Marketing in their association name.
In 1990, website URLs weren’t included so I called SMEI’s HQ in Cleveland to obtain the local chapter contact and meeting information. Much to my surprise, Larry was at my first meeting. He introduced me to his local SMEI Chapter members - other sales and marketing decision-makers - at that meeting and while doing so, raved about my sales prospecting services and the results he was now achieving as a result of hiring me to train his authorized dealer sales network to become more efficient Power Prospectors.
Shortly after, I joined the local SMEI chapter. I even attended other monthly SMEI Chapter meetings in Jacksonville, Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale in 1990 and as a result, acquired 43 new clients. In fact, my SMEI membership proved to be my most prolific trade association membership.
NUMBER 3: Develop a systematic method for contacting and qualifying your target prospects. Weekly, I snail mail and conduct phone followup to thoroughly ‘pre-qualify’ 20 best prospects: those with an urgent, near-term need for my training services and the ability to pay. My method is explained in great detail and provided with sample mailers, qualifying phone scripts and all working forms in my newly released Power Prospecting eBook. CLICK on Purchase The eBook Now in the sidebar to learn more.
OK, there you have it: 3 FREE Tips to Ease Your Pressure at the Gas Pump. It works for me. What works for you?
to prospect for new business! I’ve been doing it since the last major gas shortfall at the Regular pump when rationing and lines around the block were the rage almost 30 years ago to the month. I recall, some station owners even hired private police to prevent driveaways. Then, I changed my wicked, wasteful ways. I halved my weekly local trips; mastered the telephone to better quaify prospects; and learned to use snail-mail more effectively to consistently replace my smiling face at the Receptionist’s Desk when I used to make walk-in cold calls. Because of those applied disciplines, I’m ready and able to change my ways, again. This time, thanks to the Internet, e-mail and cell-phone technology, I can and will become even more efficient and less dependent on my vehicles and them with their high priced fuel.
You can, too! It’s high time to get patriotic and turn the tables on those greedy profiteers.
It’s no accident that my proven successful POWER Prospecting eBook was released for sale 3 weeks ago. You see, like those crafty devils in the Middle East, I have been planning and preparing for the timely introduction of a new, more efficient way to deliver my training expertise to America’s Sales Professionals.
Why drive to a seminar when you can go online anytime 24/7 from the convenience of your home or office and get trained for less than what it now cost to top off your tank! No more fuel surcharges added to my plane tickets. No more sitting in lines of planes on runways waiting to takeoff; and finally the end of tipping my hard-earned commissions away at every turn in big cities.
Besides, I much prefer sleeping in my own bed every night and letting my family see my smiling face every day instead of long distance hellos and goodbyes.
Plus, now we have other options such as BNI (Business Network International) Chapters to leverage business referrals in over 3,000 American cities. If you don’t know about BNI, then it’s high time you went online to www.bni.com to find a chapter near you. BNI is the world’s largest and fastest growing business referral network of over 7,000 chapters in 38 countries with 130,000 members who exchanged over 1,500,000 business referrals last year.
Work smarter………………………..let’s put Yankee Ingenuity to work to teach those greedly profiteers a lesson they won’t soon forget that Americans won’t be held hostage for a gallon of gas!
Do you agree?
I’m talking about that big old dog-earred book. That’s right, your old fashioned Yellow Pages Directory, not the new streamlined online version. You know, the one some of us use as a door-stop or to anchor piles of paper on windy days. Your FREE printed Yellow Pages is still a prolific source of prospects provided you read between the lines. Pick any category.
Lets say for the sake of this post, ‘Air Conditioning’. In Florida, in any metropolitan phone directory, I’d be surprised if you found fewer than 20 pages of half and full page advertisements for local, regional HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) vendors. Since our mission as power prospectors is to quickly identify potential prospects who not only need what we sell but can also afford to pay for our products and services, it’s a safe bet that any company listing which displays multiple manufacturers’ brand logos, is representating the services and sales of AC units for that branded logo. This translates into factory-authorized stocking distributors with new units, parts and consumables for older models and new installs; a robust service department with trained service technicians and usually huge inventory bays with every conceivable part for new and older models to service residential and commercial customers. This also adds up to lots of square footage for warehousing, administrative offices; plus, multiple service vehicles.
So, vendors such as these have substantial cashflow to support their operation. Look closer and you will probably see a website listing which can provide lots more detailed info about a company as well as contact names, e-mail addresses and other relevant prospecting info. Look for local trade listings such as Chambers of Commerce, Better Business Bureau which are always included to enhance community credibility and fair trade practices. Multiple phone numbers for communities and counties serviced reveals their trading areas, too.
I usually electronically copy contact info from the websites since I’m a poor typist and the websites most often contain what I need to make a first contact either via snail mailings or e-mailings followed by an initial qualifying phone contact.
Two other points worth mentioning are: #1] At www.salesgenie.com, a paid subscription database, you will find all of this same information with the sizes of their Yellow Pages Display Advertising for the phone directories vendors such as these have purchased advertising; # 2] A terrific labor and time saving tool I can’t do without is eGrabber. This inexpensive desktop tool is compatible with ACT; most major contact software programs and MSN’s Excel spreadsheet software. It enables me to Control+Copy to quickly capture individual company contact data and entire lists with only a few keystrokes. Check out eGrabber and List Grabber at www.egrabber.com.
So, your FREE copy of your printed Yellow Pages Directory, when you have a limited prospecting budget is an excellent source of prospect contacts, provided you read between the lines.
In my next post, I’ll discuss another FREE printed list source available at the Reference Desk of most public libraries: The NTPA Directory, and how to get more FREE prospect contacts to build your database. Go for it and let’s see some of your Comments.