Budgeting for Sales Professionals

This article will explain the basic purposes of a budget and why it is crucial to a proper financial plan.

Our society has a very bad problem with limitations, constraints, and boundaries. Especially when it comes to money and spending. This is probably why the word “budget” has such a negative connotation in many people’s minds. This is a shame due to the fact that budgeting focuses on what you can do, instead of what you can’t do.

What is a budget?

To many of us, a budget is eating a cheese sandwich out of a plastic bag, shopping at the dollar store, and never going out to see a movie. If you are in a tough financial position, this might be what you have to go through in your budget, at least until you get back on your feet. However, a budget can be a very powerful and positive financial tool that helps you get what you want out of life.

Budgeting is a process of purposely planning what you spend on so you live within or below your income and save toward important financial goals.

For alot of us, a budget is the perfect way of being direct about the way we spend and save our money. A budgets brings focus to our spending habits that would otherwise be frantic and uncontrolled. The focus allows us to save money instead of buying things we don’t need.

One of the biggest problems alot of people face when it comes to reaching a major financial goal, like saving for a home, is finding the money within their existing income to be able to afford it. The best way to know where your money is currently being spent is by tracking it. This means that for a few weeks, you need to write down all your expenses.

This tracking of spending will reveal exactly where your money is being spent, allowing you to make choices that will affect how much money you end with at the end of the day. One of the most important aspects of budgeting is the amount of clarity it brings to your money, because you will have a very clear picture of how all the money you make is being spent. Making conscious decisions to spend your money is different than reaching the end of the month with no money left in your checking account and no idea where most of it went.

Using a budget:

There are many different reasons why you would use a budget for, these reasons are individual, which means they can only work for you. This also means there are several different ways people can stay on track with their budgets, some can do so in their heads, and some (like me) need to have it in detail and on paper. Here are some of the most common reasons people use a budget:

• Coping with limited financial resources
• Laboring under a heavy debt load
• Working toward a major financial goal
• Wanting to live more simply
• Planning to retire early

There is a common misinterpretation about budgeting, which brings about a sense of being limited to enjoying ourselves. In reality, a budget can help you bring about more enjoyment from the money you earn. Just imagine spending $7 a day for lunch for 50 weeks, you could be taking a nice vacation at the end of the year with that money.

Most commonly though, budgeting is used to get people out of tight situations, which will eventually get them out of debt and allow for more enjoyment out of life. The main purpose of a budget is to bring control, minimize unnecessary spending, and maintain a great standard of living without debt.

Self-Employed Tax Deductions

Sales professionals are rebels, we like doing things our way and be in control of how much money we make. Not alot of people can handle that, especially when it comes the added responsibilities that come along with being self employed. I’m assuming you are reading this because you are self employed, you could be in sales or other occupation, regardless, these tips can help you figure out some really brilliant sales deductions you probably haven’t thought of yet.

Being successful in business requires the savvy knowledge of the tax code and how general finances work, read these tips carefully and think of how they can be applied into your current business expenses:

Your vehicle: Driving a car isn’t cheap, especially when you have to drive from meeting to meeting on a daily basis. This tax deduction is very simply explained, let’s assume you own two vehicles. One is used solely for the purpose of delivering client orders which means 100% of the miles and expenses are used for business, which translates to a 100% deduction on all the expenses. The second vehicle was driven 20,000, 5,000 of those miles were driven to client meetings, which means 25% of all expenses in the second vehicle are tax deductible. If you think about it, you could be saving some serious cash with these deductions!

Working at home: The IRS has become more open to work at home business deductions, you are allowed to deduct any expenses that are related to your business as long as there is a determined area being used regularly for business operations. You can also deduct the miles you drive from home to other business spaces or client meetings, as long as they are business related.

Party anyone? Yup, if you hold an open party or event for promotion of your new product or service, you’re allowed to deduct the entire cost of the event (liquor and food, too). But if you decide to make it an invitation only event, you are only allowed to deduct 50% of the total amount spent. Still, that’s one nobody has ever told you about!

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Whenever you pay for the bill at a restaurant or outing, you are required to prove it was business related. A great way to do so is make a copy of the receipt and attach any business cards of the people you had a meal or drink with, it’ll cut down on the amount of time you spend documenting every deduction.

Clean up! You were drinking a delicious cup or red wine and you got some on that fancy suit, the only way to get it out is to pay for those expensive dry cleaners. No problem! As long as the outing was business related, like a conference, you can deduct the money you spent to clean the suit. Just make sure you don’t try to deduct three months’ worth of dirty suits when you come back from a five day business conference.

Put them to work! If you dream of having your child take over your business one day? As long as you give them a real job and are willing to fill out the extra paperwork required for payroll and file it, you can get a break from whatever you pay them because they are taxed much less than a person over 18.

Hire him, too! Yeah you can also hire a spouse and deduct any medical and insurance plans you set up as an employer. You can include your hole family and yourself!

Don’t cheat! Just remember the most important thing about being in business for yourself is the honesty, it has to be on high at all times. And you can sleep well at night knowing you have nothing to hide.

Find a tax expert on this matter if you need advice on creative tax deductions, read a few books and make sure you are taking advantage of all the opportunities to save that hard earned money into a high yield savings account. Sell sell sell!

How To Get Referrals

The average small business loses over 20 percent of it’s customers on a yearly basis because of errors, changes in customers’ buying influence or personnel, customers moving or going out of business, customers being  acquired and local purchasing eliminated, and many other reasons. Getting prospects and new accounts is vital for your paycheck and your business for survival and growth. Many of the sales people and businesses spend thousands of hours every year cold calling and marketing on possible new prospects to get their business.

An often missed asset is the readily available pot of referrals from existing clients that love your product or service. There are countless opportunities to ask for a referral, and those opportunities need recognition. Pay attention to the following circumstances and people below, apply them to your own experiences and dig out those referrals that could be right under your nose:

Becoming an expert: Sales referrals are not your usual prospects, they require a transformation of speech. Which means you are no longer a solicitor, but a direct solution to one of their problems according to the person who referred you to them. It’s incredible how a friend’s word affects your prospect’s listening, then again, this isn’t a new marketing technique. Using the friendly referral to your advantage by becoming the number one source for problem solutions is the key to getting alot of them, therefore making your sales pitch shorter and more effective.

Existing customers: Yes, you have a huge pool of untouched referrals from your active customers. Even if you only have a few customers, they are probably happy with what you are selling or offering, and those make the best advertising campaigns. Every single meeting you hold with those existing customers should include some time to talk about possible referrals and cross-selling between your companies (if B2b). A simple way of getting more referrals is to compensate your current clients with discounts or some cash. Offering a reward for referring new customers will make them even happier!

New customers: A happy new customer was just acquired, they love your product, service, and delivery times. They now have a story to tell about how they were made so happy, so take advantage of it! Show them how dependent you are on their referrals and ask for one! You need to inform your client that your success depends on referrals and the quality of the product you deliver as well. You can say something like “Do you know XYZ company?” Have a list of a few local companies you want to target and ask your new client if they know anyone inside the organization you could get in contact with. Always get authorization to use your client’s name, otherwise you risk losing two new clients and your reputation.

Possible clients: Sometimes we manage to create a good relationship with a prospect that will most likely never buy anything and those are sometimes very effective sources of referrals. The key here is to have a relationship, show them how dedicated you are at serving that market and maybe they’ll help you get into another business. It works both ways, because once they refer you to that other business, they might realize they need your services as well. The point here is to always be closing and asking anyone for referrals.

Employees: The average person knows around 20o people, and most employees know your company and what it does. And who wouldn’t want a nice little bonus for the holidays? Tapping into a 10 employee circle of influence yields approximately 2,000 possible referrals and assuming we close %.5 of those 2,000 people, we are talking about 10 new customers you didn’t’ have before. They key here is to offer employees some incentives, whatever they may be, it needs to inspire action and excitement.

Suppliers: If you buy something from another company, you have a supplier. They, as well as yourself, are interested in acquiring new contacts and making more sales. Therefore it’s a win win situation for the both of you. Because suppliers usually sell raw materials to alot of different companies, they are a fantastic source of referrals. Use them wisely and remember to never stop asking for referrals.

Deliveries: Every single business in the world uses these services, from UPS to FedEx, they all serve your possible customers. Although you can’t ask them to refer you to their clients, you can simply ask the delivery personnel questions about their other accounts. The key here is also the relationship you have with your “regular guy”, start talking to them on a daily basis, ask when their birthday is, create a friendship and win them over.

New hires: Whenever there are new people coming into the organization, as a business owner, you can take advantage of this new circle of influence by asking them to practice on existing clients or customers. Take into consideration the market and how related it is to their new job. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new secretary, ask her to think of people in her life that might use your service and offer her an incentive for every new sale made! It’s essential to remember that every employee is a sales person in your organization.

Networking: Events that bring businesses together are an incredible well of referrals, simply because everyone is there to talk about business and how they can help each other. The key here is to give first, add value to other people networking and they will most likely return the value ten fold. Conversation and sharing is what makes these events so effective, if there aren’t any networking events around, start them! Use craigslist to reach out to businesses and get your name out there!

In conclusion, referrals come along with value. If your product or service ads value to people, referrals are readily available. You just have to ask for them!

Prosperity Quotes for Inspiration

Sales is an extremely tough profession, it requires a strong mind and soul. Not to mention the heart of a lion to keep fighting for your values and services. Being a lion isn’t easy at all, you are admired because of the valor accompanied by your hunting daily. Inspiring a lion is necessary to maintain that momentum you need to be successful. Success is defined by yourself, don’t let anyone tell you what success should mean.

Find these quotes inspirational? Share them!

• The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity.  But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.  ~Alan Gregg
• What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.  ~Friedrich Holderlin
• Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.  ~Aldous Huxley, Island
• Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.  ~Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Satires
• Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.  ~Francis Bacon
• Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man’s hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.  ~Don Marquis
• We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds.  ~Adam Clayton Powell, Keep the Faith, Baby!, 1967
• Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields.  ~Charles Wagner
• So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.  ~Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
• Men can bear all things except good days.  ~Dutch Proverb
• If living conditions don’t stop improving in this country, we’re going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.  ~Russell P. Askue
• How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?  ~Paul Sweeney
• Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.  ~Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950
• Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.  ~Bill Vaughan
• When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.  ~Confucius
• Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.  ~Goethe
• Luxury:  The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.  ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
• Pearls around the neck – stones upon the heart.  ~Hanan J. Ayalti, Yiddish Proverbs, 1949
• It is an ironic fact that while half the world’s population is dying as a result of diseases of poverty (largely starvation and infection) the other half is succumbing to diseases of affluence.  ~Malcolm Carruthers
• We cannot get grace from gadgets.  In the Bakelite house of the future, the dishes may not break, but the heart can.  Even a man with ten shower baths may find life flat, stale and unprofitable.  ~J.B. Priestley
• The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality…. Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality.  ~Irving Babbitt
• Luxury… corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.  ~Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
• We face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.  ~Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949
• If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.  ~Frank Lloyd Wright
• Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls.  From the opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away, none cries, “Let no more riches enter!”  ~Aeschylus
• In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.  ~Benjamin Frankli
• There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.  ~Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, 1820
• It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.  ~Samuel Johnson
• A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity ’til he has tasted adversity.  ~Sa’di (Musharrif-uddin)
• Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.  ~John Clapham, A Concise Economic History of Britain, 1957
• We’ve got the most prosperous culture in human history and we’ve also got the biggest spiritual hole in human history.  ~Mark Victor Hansen
• In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment.  ~Richard Wilkinson
• It isn’t so much that hard times are coming; the change observed is mostly soft times going.  ~Groucho Marx
• Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo:  not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.  ~Lewis Mumford
• I think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.  ~E.F. Schumacher
• All of the biggest technological inventions created by man – the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.  ~Mark Kennedy

Advertising Quotes For Sales Professionals

Advertising is a crucial aspect of any business, these quotes have been gathered for your education and perspective. Expanding the boundaries of your own mind with quotes like these will only make your job easier. Reaching out to your possible prospects and clients isn’t easy, telling the story of your product doing what it does best for them is the key to success.

If making sales is you passion, and you see how advertising makes your passion grow, then I urge you to study these quotes and learn their lesson.

• Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does. ~Steuart Henderson Britt
• What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. ~Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1964
• Advertisers constantly invent cures to which there is no disease. ~Author Unknown
• It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. ~R. Serling
• When a man throws an empty cigarette package from an automobile, he is liable to a fine of $50. When a man throws a billboard across a view, he is richly rewarded. ~Pat Brown, quoted in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985
• I think that I shall never see
• A billboard lovely as a tree.
• Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
• I’ll never see a tree at all.
• ~Ogden Nash, “Song of the Open Road,” 1933
• Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. ~Stephen Butler Leacock, quoted in Michael Jackman, Crown’s Book of Political Quotations, 1982
• Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. ~David Ogilvy
• Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance. ~Marshall McLuhan, introduction to Wilson Bryan Key, Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media’s Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America, 1974
• As advertising blather becomes the nation’s normal idiom, language becomes printed noise. ~George Will, quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations
• Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise it. ~Will Rogers
• It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive. ~Nicholas Johnson
• Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. ~George Orwell
• You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. ~Norman Douglas, South Wind
• Advertising is a bit like playing make-believe. ~Hartman Jule
• The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. ~Bill Cosby
• Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. ~J.B. Priestley
• So long as there’s a jingle in your head, television isn’t free. ~Jason Love
• Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths. ~Edgar A. Shoaff
• Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick. ~Samuel Johnson
• The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. ~Leonard Bernstein
• Advertising is only another form of statistics. ~Hartman Jule
• Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle. ~Marya Mannes, But Will It Sell?, 1964
• It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have. ~B. Earl Puckett, quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992
• I have… had a disturbing dream in which I break through a cave wall near Nag Hammadi and discover urns full of ancient Coptic scrolls. As I unfurl the first scroll, a subscription card to some Gnostic exercise magazine flutters out. ~Colin McEnroe
• In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn’t danced on TV. ~Erma Bombeck
• Our society’s values are being corrupted by advertising’s insistence on the equation: Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness. ~John Fisher, The Plot to Make You Buy, 1968
• Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. ~Samuel Johnson
• History will see advertising “as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.” ~Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988
• When the historian of the Twentieth Century shall have finished his narrative, and comes searching for the subtitle which shall best express the spirit of the period, we think it not at all unlikely that he may select “The Age of Advertising” for the purpose. ~Printers’ Ink, 27 May 1915
• Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency – she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse. ~Jacques Seguela
• First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII – and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure. ~Douglas Adams
• The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. ~Louis Kronenberger
• If you don’t find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue. ~Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Consumer’s Guide, 1897

8 Most Common Sales Mistakes

Making mistakes is a daily occurrence regardless of your occupation, in sales, it is usually more costly because it can mean the difference between making a sale and walking away empty handed. Below you’ll find 8 of the most common sales mistakes that have come between closing a sale and losing a prospect:

Allowing a prospect to lead the sales process: Asking questions is the simplest way of taking control the sales interaction process. This is also one of the most effective ways to see how compatible your product or service is with your prospect. Asking the right questions that help uncover specific issues, objectives, or problems are the key to maintaining control and establish your expertise.

Not being prepared: Being prepared is probably one of the hardest things to be when you go out making calls or have a first meeting, but it’s extremely important. This means having all the facts about your prospect’s business, your competitor’s facts, samples, testimonials, and an excavating list of questions. Not only are questions good for fact finding, but they help in handling objections. First impressions are a one time event, don’t go unprepared.

Talking too much: Saying too much is something alot of salespeople tend to do when going through the sales process. I can’t even begin to tell you how many prospects I’ve lost because something stupid slipped out of my mouth, don’t rant about how amazing your service is, your features, and so on. Concise points about your product are the only thing you need, then let the client explain why you are right or wrong. Ask questions and shut your mouth!

Irrelevant information: Your client has enough information from your key points, they don’t need useless facts about anything else. Make every word that comes out of your mouth about them, and how they will benefit from working with you. Illuminate their minds with facts and they will see how much value your product or service brings to the table.

Lacking a focused sales structure: Although you probably don’t have control over this aspect of the sales department, it’s imperative that you identify the lack of structure as a problem. If your company lacks specific information such as the way sales territories are defined, the way markets and customers are targeted, the training and development system of the company, and the sales tools that are used. Without structure, there can be no building up. Present ideas to your sales manager or whomever has the power to make something happen.

Neglecting to ask for the sale: Commitments are a must when you are dealing with a new customer, just don’t put it that way. It is your obligation to ask the customer for one, especially if you’ve invested time and money in finding a solution for their problem and assessing their needs. You’re probably asking yourself “what if I come across as pushy?”, as long as you ask for the sale in a non-threatening, confident manner, people usually respond favorably. The key here is to know when to ask for the sale, and this happens once the customer sees why they need your product and that you are the right guy/girl to provide it.

Failing to prospect: When you’re making lots of sales and business is good, you probably stop prospecting for new clients for a period of time. Forgetting how long your sales cycle is and assuming more prospects will come from the ether. The key is to prospect all the time, regardless of how good or bad business is.

Not knowing your perfect customer: Outselling your competition will only happen when you acquire the invaluable skill of being able to get to know your customer better and deeper. Having this invaluable skill will allow you to have an open door to their business and their referrals. You have to be able to understand your customer’s needs, therefore you need to know who they are and what they need.

Top 5 Reasons You Lose Sales

Being in sales requires you to stay on top of your game at all times, this includes figuring out why you’re losing sales to competitors and other businesses. You need to understand several factors of the decision making process in order to keep your customers happy. The Small Business Administration (SBA) held a study where it looked at all types of businesses and determined there are six major reasons why you lose sales or customers:

1. Perception: Clients and customers have feelings, and sometimes those feelings can be misguided when they perceive you don’t care about them or their business. You need to let your customer know how important the are to you and your business, because what binds relationship buyers to your company is the totality of the relationship which includes recognition, service, information, helpfulness, and overall friendly employees. Your clients buy relationships and are the number one priority to your business succeeding.
2. Dissatisfaction: Whether you are selling a product or service, there will always be dissatisfied clients. The key to combating this issue is to provide the customer or client with quality, brand identity, and a product or service that meets their needs and beyond. Offering something good enough to be confident about it.
3. Price: Incorrect product/service pricing will drive sales downward, whether that means your product is too expensive or too cheap in comparison to your competitor’s prices for the same offering. Pricing something too expensive will guarantee customers to go to your competitors, pricing something too cheaply will make customers think your product is of bad quality. If a client knows and believes in the advantages, they will be willing to pay more for your product or service.
4. Recommendations: Friends and family have a big impact in your client’s purchasing decisions, never underestimate their power. Customers tend to agree and trust someone whom they have a personal relationship with rather than an intrusive TV ad. The best way to battle this issue is to have a personal relationship with your client, or find things in common with them in order to close this gap.
5. Moving: Relocation is another factor you cannot control, your customer might unexpectedly move to another city or state and no longer require your product or service. Business to business clients can stop carrying a line of product and no longer require your type of shelving to hang that product, thus moving buyer categories.

There are other relevant reasons why your customers or clients will stop paying you. Finding these reasons to your specific situation is imperative to enforce customer retention. Marketing is expensive, losing clients can be costlier if you ignore it. Apply the knowledge shown here to find unique reasons why your customers leave.

How to use Twitter to make more sales

The online universe has been expanding endlessly since it’s creation in the early 70s, and today’s tools have never been used by so many different people. Your prospects are on twitter and facebook, chatting about what they want to buy and love to be sold. A search on twitter.com for “Used Car For Sale” will reveal several hundred people looking to find a great, dependable used car by tweeting to their friends.

Finding your prospects isn’t as hard as you think it is, below you’ll find a simple list of steps to immediately start finding people who want to buy your products or services.

1. Create an account: Twitter has made this a very simple process, I suggest you create an account and start browsing the site.

2. Create a brand: Branding yourself on cyberspace isn’t hard at all, especially with facebook and twitter. Services like TwitterBackgrounds.com and CustomThemes.net make it extremely simple for your prospects to recognize your personal brand.

3. Start talking: Find people that are looking for the things you are selling. If you are selling life insurance, find people who are in their 30s and have a young family. How you ask? Use WeFollow.com to find groups of people who like the things your target market likes, follow them and start talking with them.

4. Find your company: Do you represent a large corporation or company? Use the same search tool we used before to find negative or positive conversations about your company. Address their issues and become the face of your company on the web! You’ll start seeing people contact you instead of a faceless sales person.

5. Continue the conversation: Using the “@” feature on twitter, you can reply and be replied to from anywhere in the world. I suggest you use TweetDeck client to get instant replies from people who want to converse with you.

6. Add Value: As with any other mode of marketing, Twitter readers are always looking for valuable information. Assuming you are following a decent amount of people that fit your target market, you can start finding articles or tips that would be of interest to them and suggest they read them. Using the @UserName when updating your status, they’ll be able to see what you wrote.

As a final word, I’d like to remind my readers that Twitter isn’t  a hands off solution for you to make more sales. Although it simplifies the initial approach to a prospect, Twitter will require alot of work and value in order for it to yield results.

Great luck and don’t forget to follow our twitter page @SalesVeteran for constant updates.

Procrastination Quotes For Sale Professionals

Procrastination is by far our biggest enemy when it comes to making sales and meeting our goals. That feeling you get when you can come up with every possible excuse not to do what needs to be done. An art skill that is learned is that one where you can make yourself do whatever it takes at whatever time to get to where you want to go.

In sales, it isn’t any different. Especially when it comes to making sales calls. The typical excuse from alot of my fellow sales people comes from the mindset of “being busy”, when in reality, we are doing absolutely nothing.

You probably find yourself reading this site because you are avoiding making those dreaded sales calls, well take the quotes below and get inspired to do something. RIGHT NOW!

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. ~William James

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. ~Don Marquis

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown

Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back. ~Charles Kingsley

The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up. ~Author Unknown

If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done. ~Author Unknown

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. ~Robert Benchley

There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back. ~Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. ~Earl of Chesterfield

The two rules of procrastination: 1) Do it today. 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. ~Author Unknown

One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow. ~Vincent T. Foss

You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin

Someday is not a day of the week. ~Author Unknown

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing. ~Eva Young

Don’t fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. ~C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958

Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin. ~Victor Kiam

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it. ~Olin Miller

What may be done at any time will be done at no time. ~Scottish Proverb

There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house. ~Joe Ryan

Procrastination is something best put off until tomorrow. ~Gerald Vaughan

The best way to get something done is to begin. ~Author Unknown

You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate. ~Author Unknown

I do my work at the same time each day – the last minute. ~Author Unknown

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week. ~Spanish Proverb

The time to begin most things is ten years ago. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible. ~George Claude Lorimer

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform. ~Edward Young

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. ~Mark Twain

Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man. ~Jimmy Lyons

A year from now you may wish you had started today. ~Karen Lamb

Procrastination is like masturbation. At first it feels good, but in the end you’re only screwing yourself. ~Author unknown, possibly from Monty Python?

One of these days is none of these days. ~Attributed to both Henri Tubach and H.G. Bohn

Procrastination is the thief of time. ~Edward Young

Time Management Advice For Sales People

Back in the 1920s there was a survey conducted by the Sales and Marketing Management, it surveyed american businesses to find out exactly how efficient sales people were handing their time.

After the survey was completed, they uncovered that the average sales person was only putting in a total of 20 percent of their time. If you consider a normal eight hour day, they were only working around 1.5hrs per day. This survey caused a ripple effect throughout the sales industry due to the enormity of the problem. It caused companies to keep better track of what their sales people were doing, an improvement in time management skills and an overall increase of supervision from managers.

Double Your Sales

By simply calculating the amount of time you actually spend speaking with new customers now, you can figure out exactly how much time more you need to spend in order to double your sales. Although it will require you to be 100% honest with yourself, this technique will help you see what it is you’re doing on a daily basis. The amount of money you are making will also double, assuming you get the exact time correctly. Which is why honesty is a very important part of this fact finding process. As long as you know how many hours or minutes more you need to spend doing sales producing activities, the amount of sales will increase.

In essence, you must double the amount of time you spend in front of qualified prospects in order to double the amount of sales you’re making. Even if you fail to improve in the other aspects of the sales process, getting in front of more people who can buy will increase the number of sales. Simple.

The Job of the Salesperson

What exactly is the description of what a sales person should be doing? Alot of the time we get lost in the many jobs we have to fill when we are in sales, but essentially our job as sales people is to generate and maintain customers. The way we measure the success of a sales person is by the number of new customers generated and the retention rate of the previously acquired customers. Which means that the only time we are doing our jobs, as sales people, is when we put our faces in front of potential customers. Delivering whatever message we have to deliver in order to achieve the most amount of sales.

Begin with Clear Income and Sales Goals

One of the most important factors for achieving the highest rank of success as a sales person is having a clear goal for income and sales. The amount of focus you can give to that goal will help you manage your time much better, simply because you know exactly where you are headed and you know how to get there. My personal practice begins on Monday mornings, when I sit down at my desk with a hot cup of coffee and I choose to write down my goals for this week. I determine those goals by looking at my last week’s achievements and appointments. Meaning, if I only sold $15,000 in medical supplies last week, but my goal was double that, I need to make $45k this week. Simply because of a choice, I can do whatever it needs to be done to achieve that goal.

Determine What You Will Have to Do

One the fist step of figuring out what your goals are is completed, you need to figure out how you’re going to achieve them. One of the most important pieces of information I own is to break down your goals into activities to do. Meaning you need to transform that $45k goal into how many clients/hours/days/calls you need to make.

The key to this process is to control your activities, although you can’t control your results, the amount of activity you produce is key. Engaging in the activities necessary to get to your goals will only increase your chances at succeeding.

Get Better at What You Do

Once the first step is 100% clear to you, figured out exactly what you need to do on a daily basis, and determined how you’re going to get there, you need to work on your individual sales skills. Being in sales requires you to constantly improve your overall business skills, speech, looks, and etc.

Next Page »