As a small business owner and also the person who is responsible for the sales for my company, it is important that I focus on sales tasks that generate revenue.

One day, I stopped and looked at all the different sales tasks I was doing and realized that I was doing stuff that took away from generating revenue. In most cases, anything that is outside of meeting with clients and prospects that doesn’t build a relationship or uncover what a client needs is what I look at as non-core or non-revenue generating.

For example, in a typical day, I was spending about 50% to 60% of my time on sales tasks that didn’t generate revenue. Once I figured this out, I realized that I could be way more efficient and generate more sales.

Outsourcing Non-Core Sales Tasks

Below is a process that you can use to determine what sales tasks you should outsource:

Keep Track of What You Do During the Day

This is easy to do. You can typically look at what you do in any given day or you can keep a journal that lays this out for you.

Determine if it Helps You Generate Revenue or Not

You need to say to yourself, “If someone else did this, would it allow me to focus on those activities that will make me money?”

If you say yes, then you should outsource that task.

Map Out the Process

When you determine what tasks you want to outsource, make sure that you document the process so that it can be easily followed. The reason for this is critical. If the person doing the task can’t follow your process, they won’t be able to do it correctly.

To see if it is easy to do your documented task, let a friend see if they can do it. If your friend can follow your steps, then everything is good. If they can’t follow your steps, then ask for input and refine your outsourcing process.

Find Someone to Take on This Chore

This can be accomplished either at a local level or by offshoring the tasks. At a local level, you can put an ad up in a local classified service like Craigslist or ask around to see if someone can help you.

If you are looking to offshore your sales tasks, you can look to services like Elance or Fiverr. In either case, you can have people do work for you on an hourly basis or on a quoted fixed price basis.

One thing that I did have to overcome was cultural differences and time zone differences.  I have experimented with the different services listed above and one that I found that helped me out with the cultural and time zone issues was Teleworking Expats For Hire.  They were able to source North Americans based in Mexico to help me out.

Make Sure That You Monitor the Work Being Done

You should always make sure that the work that is being done it up to your expectation. If it isn’t, then see if the contractor can fix it or else you will have to find another contractor to complete your sales tasks.

Outsourcing Example

Below are some examples of some sales tasks that I am currently outsourcing; emails, cold calling, list building, answering phone calls, monitored live chat on some of my websites and transcribing videos, among others.

As an example, I’ll look at cold calling. I have a process that I use that is very effective but it is very time consuming. I looked at how long it was taking me to call on new businesses each day and realized that if I could outsource this process, then I would be saving about 2 to 3 hours per day of time.

Not only did I gain back 2 to 3 hours of time, I also was able to increase the amount of sales calls that I could make and this in turn allowed me to increase the amount of sales I make.

I am kicking myself for not doing this earlier in my career. In fact, had I had the opportunity to outsource some of my tasks years ago, I am sure that I would be way further ahead today.

Here is my suggestion, if you work for yourself or for a company, take a look at what you can outsource so that you can focus on your core revenue generating sales tasks and then get someone to look after these tasks so that you can focus on the revenue generating tasks.

Outsource Photo via Shutterstock

The post How I Outsourced My Non-Core Sales Tasks appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Knowledge is dead. Have you heard this?

It’s a meme making the rounds in marketing circles right now. This happens periodically, when advances in technology make accessing information easier, faster and less expensive than it was previously.

It creates a type of existential angst in the industry: What’s the point in showcasing expertise when anyone can be an expert?

Any question can be answered with a quick web search. We don’t have to know anything, we can Google it.

Well, I’m here with good news for you. Knowledge isn’t dead. Knowledge isn’t even sick. What knowledge is, however, is fundamentally misunderstood.

Google Happened. Good For You.

Yes, Google happened. The Internet is indeed out there, in all its splendid, schizophrenic glory, cram packed full of data points, which may or may not be factual, that the Internet will return to you when you do a search. But reports of knowledge’s death are entirely premature.

Proof of concept: An Internet search for “How to cure cancer” will return to you as one of the top ten results, a site that promises that the cure can be found in your kitchen cupboard—specifically, baking soda. Does this “knowledge” mean you’re ready to go forward and start healing the sick? Probably not.

Knowledge isn’t the accumulation of data points. Knowledge is the ability to judge the quality of the data points you encounter. When you’re knowledgeable about a subject, you possess a frame of reference informed by your experience and education.

How to Use Knowledge to Connect to Your Customer

Knowledge Applied is Knowledge Alive

As a business owner, your knowledge of your field is greater than your customer’s knowledge is. Demonstrating this is to your advantage. The digital landscape may be flooded with lots of information, but it’s not packed with knowledge. You have to bring that to the table. This concept needs to be at the core of your online marketing strategy.

For example, if you’re a web designer, you know that your clients can go out and search the Internet for how to build a website. They’ll find a lot of information out there—all kinds of things like HTML, CSS coding, CMS systems, mobile compatibility, responsive design, etc. And it suddenly becomes clear to them that they need help navigating all of this.

Implementing this approach and philosophy means understanding the following:

Full Buy-in

Before you begin executing this type of strategy, you need to be sure that you and your firm truly buy into this strategy. You cannot get caught up in worrying that your competitors will learn from you.

You need to be completely confident in your company and your own depth of knowledge and experience.

Become Detail Oriented

Your online presence should clearly establish that you know the facts—and not any random detail, but the most valuable particulars that are highly relevant to your customers. Tell a story no one else is telling.

This is your chance to demonstrate that you understand who your customers are and what’s important to them.

People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

Answering your customers’ questions before they even knew they had questions is a very powerful and convincing sales technique. Don’t just give your customers the facts. Give them the facts that matter to them.

For example, an adventure travel company’s most popular blog post isn’t focused on an exotic getaway destination as you might expect. Instead, it’s a guide to traveling internationally with small children. This travel company understood that their customers were parents first and adventurers second.

They took their specialized knowledge about adventure travel with children and put it out there.

Knowledge that applies to your customers’ lives is knowledge that’s alive – alive and building your business.

Knowledge Photo via Shutterstock

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Sales is about relationship building. Gone are the days of explaining, cajoling and persuading people to buy what you have to sell.

With competition greater than it’s ever been, salespeople are well served to pay attention to themselves, how they are feeling, what they need and how they interact in order to succeed.

This awareness will help them in their relationship building.

Self-Awareness Sales Techniques: Positively Impact Sales

Emotional Awareness

There are a couple of aspects of self-awareness to consider. The first is emotional awareness. Emotional awareness is understanding how you are feeling and how those feelings are translating into actions.

An example of this is how you feel as you prepare to cold call. If you are uncomfortable with the process, that discomfort can be relayed to the prospect on the other end of the phone.

Having an awareness of that discomfort helps you reset your emotional state so your performance isn’t impacted negatively.

Self-Assessment

This is where self-assessment comes in. It’s important to do a gut check before any interactions with prospects or clients.

How are you feeling? What can you do with those feelings?

Self-assessment also includes understanding your strengths and challenges. Dr. Phil says we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge.

Knowing where you are is the first step in adjusting and educating yourself.

Self-Confidence

Another part of self-awareness is self-confidence. Self-confidence is when you have a certainty about your worth and capabilities. You can see how awareness and assessment help you get to this state.

Having self-confidence in sales allows you to make those cold calls and go on those sales appointments. You are sure of what you know and how you conduct yourself, so you are comfortable with the prospect.

Self-confidence is critically important in sales for two reasons:

• First, those people who aren’t self-confident tend to overcompensate and appear aggressive and obnoxious. No one likes them or wants to do business with them.
• Second, the other danger is coming across as unsure. While you may know you are just feeling unsure, the prospect may read it as disbelief in the product or service.

Remember that they don’t know you yet. They don’t know that your self-confidence is in question. All they see is discomfort. Their translation of that can be very dangerous to your goals.

Self-Talk

Self-talk is a key element of self-awareness. Going through the process of self-talk before a sales call or before picking up the phone can mean the difference between winning or losing the sale. This is the place where you reconfirm your confidence—not only in yourself but in your product or service.

Doing some self-talk after an appointment can be equally valuable. In this case you walk yourself through the call and assess how you did, what you learned, and where you ended up.

This awareness before, during and after your interactions with prospects and clients will help you stay on top of your game.

Your success will increase because you will be present and engaged at every step.

Self-Awareness Photo via Shutterstock

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This analysis is already being used for the next election in 2014. For those of us in the sales business, the presidential election can teach us a lot about how to motivate people, how to close the deal and how to make the most efficient use of customer data to help nurture sales leads.

Below are a few lessons from the U.S. presidential election that sales people should take to heart

Sales Lessons From The Presidential Election

Reward Your Most Loyal and Enthusiastic Customers

Every presidential campaign is an exercise in “rallying the base” – presidential campaigns don’t usually try to persuade voters from the other party. Instead, they focus much of their resources on trying to motivate and inspire the voters from their own party who were already likely to vote.

The reason is simple: By rallying the base, political campaigns can get their most dedicated supporters to give money, volunteer and spread the message of the campaign on social media in a way that will hopefully reach more voters than television ads could.

In the same way, sales people need to constantly build relationships with existing customers. Who are your most loyal customers? These are your organization’s “base,” those more likely to refer you to their friends and colleagues. Instead of trying to constantly introduce your company to new sales leads, who might not know anything about you and might be hesitant to take your call, you might get better sales results by “rallying the base.”

Reach out to loyal customers who have bought from you before (and who have referred you to others).

Back to Basics Tactics Often Bring the Biggest Results

There is a new book about the surprisingly successful tactics of presidential campaigns called “The Victory Lab,” which discusses how some of the most “old fashioned” and mundane campaign tactics can have the biggest results.

For example, two of the ways that have proven most effective at boosting voter turnout are personal door knocking and phone calls from volunteers. Not robo-calls or television ads. There are many parallels like this between the worlds of politics and sales. Many sales people get caught up in technology and rely too heavily on their customer relationship management system and other tools.

While technology is important, one of the biggest ways to ensure sales success is to keep doing the mundane. The less exciting work of dialing prospects and setting up appointments and working through the sales cycle.

Know Your Customers

In the 2012 presidential election, both the Obama campaign and Romney campaign were trying to reach a narrow sliver of undecided voters. These two “brands” were basically competing for the same tiny pool of “customers,” trying to close the deal on election day.

One of the most important tasks for each campaign was to conduct internal polling and tracking to make sure they were targeting the right voters. It does no good for a campaign to spend money and time talking to voters who were already going to vote for the other candidate. Accuracy in the collection and analysis of this “customer data” is one of the most underrated aspects of the modern presidential campaign.

In the same way, sales people need to make sure they understand their own customer data by focusing on the right metrics and analytics. Just like a campaign has internal polling that helps them focus attention on the right voters, your company needs to identify the most promising prospects at each stage of the sales cycle. So you don’t waste time, effort and resources trying to sell to people who aren’t ready to buy or who aren’t the right fit.

In many ways, sales is a more forgiving business than presidential politics. There is not just one “winner” in sales. Even if you fail to close the deal with a customer today, you can make up for it tomorrow.

But there are many lessons that sales people can learn from the results and process of the 2012 presidential election: rally the base, get back to basics on your sales tactics and use technology and data analysis to focus your efforts on the right sales prospects at each stage of the sales cycle.

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How good the acquisition will be for small merchants and consumers remains to be seen. One thing seems clear: this Google ecommerce play will likely help the search giant compete against Amazon and eBay in ecommerce.

What Channel Intelligence Does

Channel Intelligence (CI) helps retailers sell their products online through various channels and services. Simultaneously, it tries to  make it easier for consumers to find products they want to buy.

Services offered by CI include “where to buy” buttons that sellers can include on their websites. Their services also help merchants to promote their products and get found on shopping search engines such as Google Shopping.

CI and Google have already worked together for years, as CI was one of the original Google Shopping launch partners.

Why the Acquisition is a Google Ecommerce Play

If you, like Google, owned a shopping search engine, wouldn’t you want to discourage shoppers from going directly to competing ecommerce sites like Amazon and eBay — and encourage them to instead search Google?  The more consumers who search Google Shopping and find what they want, the more valuable that shopping engine becomes.  CI’s technology and know-how are a path to increase that value.

With CI’s technology and services, Google Shopping will be in a position to provide more marketing and selling tools to businesses that use the platform. This will make Google Shopping more attractive to merchants.   And that of course, means more revenue for Google.  Google Shopping switched over to having exclusively paid listings in September 2012. So the only products featured on Google Shopping are those from merchants who pay for the privilege.

Also, as Search Engine Land notes, it is likely that eventually CI’s services will be available only for Google Shopping, and not competing shopping engines. That could give Google Shopping an edge against its competitors.

Net result: Google gets a bigger slice of the ecommerce pie.

In a post on the company’s blog, the CI team said that it will continue offering its services to clients. It doesn’t say clearly whether such services will be exclusive to Google Shopping or available for other competing search engines and shopping services. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of this year.

ICG Group Inc. and Aweida Capital Management are currently the joint owners of Channel Intelligence. The company is based in Florida and has additional offices in Phoenix, London and Shanghai.

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Everyone has an opinion about the way their customers feel towards them. The more you show that you care about your customer, the more they’ll likely want to continue patronizing you and recommending new customers.

With that in mind, providing good customer service to your clients should naturally be a major priority in your day-to-day schedule.

Here are 20 “tricks of the trade” to develop superior customer service that will also attract new customers:

1. Respond to Clients as Soon as Possible

Speed is everything, especially when a client is requesting something that’s time sensitive. When you respond to your clients swiftly, they are satisfied and will hold nothing back at recommending your brand.

2. Keep Clients Updated

Let your customers know what you’re working on and how things are progressing, give them reinforcement that they’re involved. Hence, you must bring your customers up to date – always.

3. Show Them You Care

Put your customers first. It’s rare to find good customer support, but you can get a jump on the competition and attract new customers by focusing on this crucial area of your business. Show them you really care and you will earn their patronage.

4. Listen Carefully

Do you clearly understand the needs of your customer? Listening intensely to what they have to say creates a great rapport.

5. Understand Your Customer’s Needs and Meet Them

Listen to the “voice of the customer” and take action accordingly. Listening to customers can be done in many ways. For example, using feedback forms and satisfaction surveys. Listen to ensure decisions benefit the customer as much as your company.

6. Be Consistent

Customers expect consistent quality of service. Acting nice today and acting nasty another day will only scare your customers away. Be consistent and follow through. Let them know that consistency is really what you are about.

7. Open Communication Channels

The customer wants to contact you in many ways – face to face, by mail, phone, fax, and email – and will expect all of these communication channels to be open and easily accessible. Therefore, put in place adequate measures to be reached when you are needed.

8. Reward Customers

Put in place an adequate reward system for your customers. When you do this, you increase the confidence customers have in your brand. Reward them adequately and on time for that which you have gained from them.

9. Know Your Customer Value

One way to know this is to interact highly with your customers. When you are close to them, you are able to draw an inference on what they want. Mingle closely with them to gain whatever information necessary.

10. Stay in Contact

Encourage customers by staying in touch with them through a blog, newsletter, or some other means that affords ongoing communication. Just ensure that you keep the conversation going.

11.Don’t Make Promises Unless You Intend to Keep Them

Reliability is crucial to any good relationship and good customer service is no exception. Think before you make promises – because nothing annoys customers more than a broken one.

12. Deal with Complaints

No one likes hearing complaints, so it’s little wonder why many hate when folks complain. Deal with customer complaints maturely and you will reap the benefits of good customer service.

13. Be Helpful – Even if There’s No Immediate Profit

Be open to being helpful at all times. Do not be nice only when there’s a reward in it for you. Helping your clients, even when they least expect it, will impress them and build their trust in you.

14.Take the Extra Step

If you want to provide good customer service, go beyond what your clients want. Going the extra mile surely adds a sense of satisfaction.

15. Stay Loyal

Loyalty is key to attracting new customers. When your existing customers know that you are loyal, they hold nothing back when it comes to introducing new customers to you and your business. This is marketing that is done passively for you.

16. Introduce Promotions

In a bid to get your customers glued to your brand, introducing mouth watering promotions can act like magic. Promotions that provide true savings and value causes current customers to introduce others to you and your business in an effort to pass those savings along.

17. Throw a Party

Here’s a thought. Why not throw parties for your customers? It’s an opportunity for customers to meet, for you to cultivate relationships with them, for you to gain an understanding of what they want and why they purchased from you, and it builds a sense of community – they might even bring a friend. Lexus, the luxury vehicle division of Toyota Motor Corporation, has programs such as this in place.  One of them is featured in the video below:

18. Keep Them Up to Speed

If the need for you to raise prices occurs, inform your customers in advance. Their feedback will serve as a good measure to know if they welcome the change or not and it also provides them the opportunity to make purchases prior to the price hike.

19. Be Appreciative

Say thank you at all times for your clients’ patronage. Never feel above being thankful.  After all, you are in business because of them.

20. Build Trust

There are various ways in which you can build trust and providing consistent value is one of them. Decide which works best for you and carve a niche around it.

Master these items above and before long, you’ll be amazed at how loyal your customers become to your brand.  Never forget that more customers, equals more profit. Therefore you have all the opportunity in the world to increase your customer base by putting in place top notch customer service.

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However, on a recent visit to my local post office, I saw one thing the USPS was doing very well: upselling.

Let me give you the full story. I had to ship back a defective cell phone so I took it to the post office. I put it in a priority shipping envelope, got in line, and soon (only took a couple minutes which impressed me) made it to the cashier.

The cashier greeted me, took the package, and began his upsell pitch:

“Would you like to receive confirmation when the package arrives?”

Followed by:

“Is the package valuable; would you like insurance?”

And then:

“With first class postage it will arrive in three days; for just a little more I could get it there faster – would you like that?”

Now, to be honest, I didn’t take any of these upsells. Because I was returning a defective product. And I didn’t really care how quickly it got there, and I didn’t want to waste any more money on it.

But, if I were sending other packages, I very well might have take one or more of the upsells and thus paid the USPS a lot more money.

Importantly, upsells can and will dramatically improve the profitability of your business. In fact, it’s been estimated that McDonald’s doubled its profits when it started asking customers:

“Would you like fries with that?”

It doubled profits again when it started asking:

“Would you like to super size that?”

Upsells dramatically improve profits since you incur no additional marketing costs. You have already incurred the marketing cost (e.g., advertising, PR, social media, etc.) to get the customer there, so the additional sales are much more profitable.

Airlines have also gotten better at upselling recently. The last time I purchased a seat, I was upsold on paying for:

• Luggage
• Seats with extra legroom
• Flight insurance
• In-flight movies and food
• The convenience of boarding the plane earlier

Importantly, upsells not only increase your profits, but they allow you to advertise where your competitors can’t and thus dramatically grow your company.

For example, if your competitor’s average profit per sale is $50, they can only advertise in media where they can generate new sales for less than $50. Conversely, if your company, via upsells, generate an average profit per sale of $75, you’ll be able to advertise in many places they can’t.

For example, if one media source (e.g., a newspaper ad) generated new customers at a cost of $60 each, you would be able to advertise there profitably, while your competitors could not.

When thinking about what to upsell your customers, think about what additional products or services you could give them that would better solve their problems. If you were a hardware store about to sell a hammer, could you offer the customer nails? Or a glove to reduce blisters?

Some entrepreneurs and business owners think offering upsells is too aggressive. Sure, it can be if done in certain ways. But have you ever seen someone storm out of a McDonalds saying:

“The nerve of him.  I can’t believe he asked if I wanted fries with that?”

So, figure out the right upsells for your customers. Then create scripts for your employees to use to offer them. This can quickly boost your profits and allow you to dominate your market.

U.S. Postal Photo via Shutterstock

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There is another way to look at this statistic: Are you part of the 82% who are going after the 34% of sales that are not influenced by word of mouth or business referrals?

Most sales representatives find it tough to get business referrals, but it doesn’t have to be.

Here are 6 ways to get business referrals from clients and acquaintances:

Let Everyone Know What You Do

This is more for acquaintances but you should let people you meet also know what you do. It is said that everyone has a network of 250 people and these 250 people know 250 people. This means that you can have access to up to 62,500 people.

Imagine how many of these people could potentially use what you sell.

Ask for Referrals

As crazy as this sounds, you should just ask people you do business with or who you know, who they may know that they could refer you to.

Form Relationships with Synergistic Companies

Why not look to other sales people in non-competing, synergistic companies to generate business referrals?

For instance, if you are a home renovation company, consider working with an interior designer so that you can share business referrals back and forth.

Networking Events

Networking events are a great way to meet people that can help you with business referrals. A great resource to for networking events is Meetup.com. All you have to do is go to Meet Up and look for different networking events in your town or city.

If you can’t find one in your town or for your industry, then join Meet Up and start one. I did this and I run two groups in Calgary. I have meet lots of great people and been given some great introductions to people that have translated into business.

Use LinkedIn

One of the best features of LinkedIn is the ability to see people in your network who are in other peoples network that you my not be connected to.

For example, if you want to get in to see a Vice President of Sales for a company, you can go to LinkedIn and see if this person is on LinkedIn. You can then look and see who you know who may know them.

Then all you do is approach your connection to see if they can introduce you to the Vice President of Sales that you want to meet.

Give Referrals

The best way to get business referrals is to give referrals. Always be listening to see if people need help. If you know someone that can help them, then it is your obligation to make a referral.

One Last Note

It’s one thing to get a business referral, but to take things to a whole new level, get introductions. Take your referral process to the next level and get your contacts to line up meetings to personally introduce you to referrals.

Referrals Photo via Shutterstock

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These two items work hand in hand to help you bring in new revenues, but because the latter is often neglected, a company’s revenues are rarely maximized.

Developing Customer Loyalty is Critical to Your Business Development

It has been said that a loyal customer is worth their weight in gold, and considering the high price per ounce of gold these days, your business development model can’t afford to neglect it.

For many business owners, the amount of returning customers they have will either make or break their business for good. So how do you create customer loyalty?

• By offering a better product or service than your competitors.
• By offering better customer service that your competitors.
• By offering your customers a better value with you than with your competitors.
• By building an actual relationship with your customers.

Relationships Are Essential

When people feel like they have an actual relationship with an organization, they are much more likely to stay with that organization, be lenient with them, and spend more money to stay with them. Almost 7 out of 10 customers will leave a company for good because of a bad experience.

Why do those other 3 out of 10 people stay with a company?

Because of their sense of loyalty to that company.

Are You Looking for an Easy Way to Maximize Your Customer Base?

One of the easiest ways to help get your products promoted and develop customer loyalty is to promote the products or services of others as you promote your own. An in-turn promotional relationship not only gives you a free way to expand your business development model, but it creates a relationship with the other party who is more likely to use your product or service when they need to do so.

Offering discounts for returning customers is another simple and easy way to maximize the potential of your existing customer base.

Are You Ready to Expand Your Business Development Model?

Loyal customers are the most cost effective way to building your profits, so finding ways to keep your customers coming back time and time again is critical. You will have to experiment with unique ways your business can make a statement today that will have your customers coming back tomorrow every single time.

It will be well worth the effort.

A pile of money Photo via Shutterstock

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Let’s start by taking a look at what happened.

On November 6^th Americans cast their votes for who they wanted as President and Vice-President of the United States. All of the information available at the time showed that 49% of the population was going to vote for the Democrat and 49% of the population was going to vote for the Republican. That left only 2% up for grabs. That 2% was the Independents and it became a target market.

When we decide to prospect we should start with understanding the value of our product or service. What is it about our offering that is of value to our clients? Why do people buy what we have to sell? What problem does it solve? It is this understanding that helps us identify appropriate target markets. “Appropriate target markets” is the key here. You can’t sell something to someone who doesn’t see value in it.

At the same time, if you don’t deliver your message effectively, even the “appropriate target market” won’t hear it. So, you can see that there is a lot to selling effectively.

When we look at the 2012 election we see the following:  The Democrats understood the target market better than the Republicans. They developed a message that the Independents heard and understood. The Independents ‘bought’ the value the Democrats were ‘selling.’ And so, the Democrats won. Get it?

It’s not a political statement. I’m not talking about whether one side has more value than the other. I’m talking about how they each went about the process of prospecting to that target market and what the results were. It may be that the 2% wasn’t a viable target market for the Republicans.

If we assume that they understood their value and messaged it, well then the results indicate the target market didn’t need what they had to sell; the Independents, therefore, were not an “appropriate target market” for the Republicans.

If we assume that the Republicans were thinking first about winning over the target market and not about their value, then we can conclude that they proceeded with a message that wasn’t based in value as the target market would see it. They decided that they were going to share their message and convince people that it was valuable.

They weren’t, in this case, thinking about solving the problem of the target market. They were thinking that their message was compelling and people would hear it. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

So, what can you do with this information? Learn the lesson and create a sales strategy that works:

1. Understand Your Value

Know why it is that people need what you have to sell. Don’t get caught up in what you want them to know. Think about things from their viewpoint – what they want to know. What do they need to solve their problem? Do you have that thing?

2. Identify Appropriate Target Markets

You can’t sell to people who don’t need or want what you have to sell. And you will waste your time if you decide to pursue the wrong markets. Once you understand your value, identify the target markets that will see it.

3. Message To The Market Directly

Make sure your message is pointed to a specific target market. In order to be heard, you should pick one target at a time to prospect to. Your message should speak directly to them so they hear it.

When you realize that the only people/companies that will buy what you have to sell are those who need it, you’ll spend your time prospecting to them. And once you identify who they are, help them solve a problem. Then, and only then, will they want to do business with you.

Learn the lessons from the 2012 election. Don’t sell to inappropriate target markets. Do message effectively to appropriate target markets.

Election Photo via Shutterstock

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