• Home
• Why I am a Sales Prospecting Expert

3 FREE Tips to Ease Your Pressure at the Gas Pump!

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?   

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.