If you visit my web site, you'll discover that I'm passionate about a lot of things -- research, Neuro-Semantics®, mind mapping, co-creative coaching, the financial markets and trading, computer music and sales and marketing. But right now, as the year 2003 approaches, I'm mostly passionate about sales coaching, and how I think sales professionals can turn the economy around.

I have a few ideas, which I'll share with you shortly. First, though, I'd like to invite you, as sales professionals, to share with me your issues -- the obstacles that are holding you back in your selling -- in complete confidence. Just send me an e-mail at

znmeb@borasky-research.net

Now for my ideas:

1. I think that the key to selling in a down economy is intensive prospecting. If every sales professional prospects an extra two hours a week, that's going to make a big difference! I'm not going to tell you how to prospect. That's going to depend on what you're selling and who your target market is. But I am going to tell you that, however much time you think you need to spend prospecting, you're probably not spending enough.

2. Develop frames of curiosity and joyful learning. Your selling will be only as good as your states of mind, and a curious state of mind about your suspects and prospects, their needs, wants, problems and so on is going to pay big dividends. You'll find new uses for your product or service, simple things you can do to increase sales and so on. (Sneaky me: in my second paragraph, I exercised my curiosity about your issues as sales professionals. Even if you don't hire me as a coach, learning from you will make me a better coach. :)

Joyful learning? Do you have any idea how many sales books there are? Well, a few days ago, I did a keyword search at Amazon.com for "sales" and came up with ... are you ready? 6577! There are probably hundreds of sales trainings and thousands of sales trainers and coaches. I did a search on the CoachVille Referral Service

http://www.coachvillereferral.com

for sales coaches and came up with 606!

Books, trainings, coaches, the Internet -- there are so many places to

http://www.borasky-research.net/SalesBooks.html

3. Get off of the Internet. I've had a presence on the World Wide Web since 1994. I've seen it turn from essentially an elite electronic library to a revolutionary electronic marketplace. Every day, you see statistics about how many millions of people are on the Internet and how many web pages there are.

But do you have any idea how many people aren't on the Internet? How many people don't have a broad-band web connection, 1536 megabytes of RAM, dual hyperthreaded Pentium 4s and DVD writers? How many people don't have a wireless Pocket PC?

My point here is that if you're limiting your prospects to people with computer literacy and broadband Internet connectivity, you're basically telling a large number of folks you aren't interested in doing business with them. And if your web page takes 30 seconds to load at 28K, chances are that even the high-powered users aren't going to become customers.

Business is about people first, time and money next, goods and services next, and technology last! So ... get out and talk to people -- in person and on the phone. Get involved in seminars, networking meetings, dialogues, conversations -- not debates, e-mail discussions or sales pitches. Ask questions ... learn from your suspects and prospects ... find out what people want.

Well ... I've said my piece, so I'm going to put down my mouse, log off, and go do my Sunday prospecting. Have a great year -- you deserve it!

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
http://www.borasky-research.net
mailto:znmeb@borasky-research.net

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About the Author

Mr. Borasky is a coach, trainer, consultant, writer and researcher, specializing in psychological and mathematical modeling. His experience ranges from sales and marketing to scientific application and operating system programming. He is also a cat person.