Government Bid Lists

Get on all government bid lists for your products and services. There are Local, State, and Federal lists. These are lists the branches of government send out to accept bids when they need to make a purchase or acquire products or services. The process takes price bids on products and services the government intends to buy. The purchases usually goes to the lowest cost provider. These contracts are not windfalls of profits. But, they will provide you with some business and profit. Remember when times are hard every little bit of business counts.

Use Membership Lists For Leads

Get and use membership list of local civic and social organizations. These are groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, Rotary, or Kiwanis. These lists are usually public information. They should be available at your local library. You can also join an organization to obtain their membership list. The people belonging to these types of organizations are usually the movers and shakers of a community. So, they make excellent sources of both leads and referrals!

Staying In Contact With Current Customers

Always stay in contact with your current customers. They are the life of your business. You should strive to turn them into lifetime customers. You do this by always keeping your name in front of them. You need to always stay in contact and communicate with them. Try to add value to their lives in some way. Here is one reason to stay in contact with your established customers. It cost a business five times more to sell a new customer than to sell to an established one. Your established customers already believe in you and you product. So, take advantage of this by letting them know about any new products or services your business may offer.

Use CD & DVD To Get Your Sales Information Out

Pass out CDs or DVDs with a mini sales pitch or information about your offer on them. Include some brief customer benefit statements and customer endorsements if you have any. Be sure to include all of you contact information. This is a great affordable way to attract attention to your business. These can be done for about 50 to 75 cents apiece. The best part about this method is it gets people’s curiosity up. Making them more likely to listen to or view your disc. Another advantage to this method is it has a good pass along rate. This means your marketing material gets passed on to different viewers. Most marketing material has a very low pass along rate. The superior pass along rate of this marketing method gives it extra fire power!

Let Others Know How You Make A Living

Make sure everyone knows what you do for a living. Also, be sure everyone knows what type of products or services you have to offer. There is nothing worse than someone telling you they just brought what you are selling from someone else because they didn’t know you were in the business. How bad is that? You just gave your sale away because you failed to let others how what you do for a living. Don’t keep others in the dark about what you do. Be sure and tell them. Especially let people you do business with know how you make your living. Does your doctor or dentist know about your business or what you do for a living? What about the clerk at the convenient store? They should all know. After all, part of their income depends on your success. They might want to give you some referrals when they find out some of their income is tied to you success.

Be A Joiner To Increase Your Business

Be a joiner. Join and participate in groups and organizations that cater to your prospects. This could be any type of group or organization from school sports booster groups to the Lions Club. This is a good way to build name recognition and rapport with your target audience. The more popular civic organizations such as Rotary, Lions Club, and Kiwanis will also help build your name recognition in your local business community. Be sure to always let others in the group know what you do for a living. These groups are also a good source for sales leads. But in order to make this work, you have to take an active role in these groups. You can’t just join to get your name on the membership list and forget about them.

Be A Name Dropper To Build Business

When calling on prospects always mention names of businesses that you are working with now that they might know. Also, mention businesses by name they might know who have brought from you in the past. This will help establish your credibility as someone trustworthy. It also gives prospects the impress that sense others are buying from you maybe they should too. They may feel the need to get on the band wagon and also buy from you. It helps to establish what you are offering as something of value. After all, those other people wouldn't be buying your product unless it had some real value. People like to have their decisions validated by others. Mentioning the names of other businesses you have sold helps with this process.

Know Your Customer

Know who your customers are. Create a profile of what a good customer would be like for you. What are their likes and dislikes? Where do they live? What do they do for a living? Do research to find out as much information as possible about your customer base. Know their demographics. Know what they enjoy doing in their spare time. Know the type of prospects that would be best suited for your offer. The more you know about your customer base the better off you are. The easier prospecting will be. This information will allow you save time by only working with people who are interested in what you have to offer.

How To Get Leads and Business Ideas At Same Time

Here's a good way to get sales leads and business ideas at the same time. Join and participate in lead exchange clubs and organizations. These are groups made up of other sales and business people. They usually limit membership to only one person from each profession. Therefore, no one is competing for the same business. The sole purpose of these groups is to exchange leads and share business ideas. They usually meet once a week. These groups are an excellent source of leads and business knowledge. You might want to consider belonging to a couple of them. To find out about these groups, ask salespeople from different industries if they know of any in your area.

Testmonials and Technology

Everyone knows the best form of advertisement you can have is word of mouth. The ultimate form of word of mouth is testimonials from satisfied customers. The people who use your products or services and tell others about them. This is a very believable third party endorsement of you and what you are selling. Here's how to bend the old and new together to take advantage of this. The old is using testimonials. The new is using today's technology. Get your best customers to let you video them giving a short, in their words, testimony about you and your product. (You can buy an affordable video camera for this for about $200.) Then down load these testimonies to your computer. Use Windows Movie Maker on your computer to edit these into a short movie. Your next step is to copy or burn these on to DVD discs.(The finished DVD will cost you less that $1 each) You now have short video of several people giving you testimonials. Hand these out to your better prospects. Tell them to see for themselves what others are saying about you. This is a very powerful tool. You can use it either to get new customers or to close sales. (Note: Always get your customer's written permission before using them in any videos or pictures)

How To Increase Your Sales

Here's an easy way to increase your sales and income. Always try to up sale or have something to offer as an add on sale. The add on sale is where your have a small companion product that goes with the main product. At closing you ask the customer if they want to include it in the purchase for only a few dollars more. You can develop an add on product for about any type of sale. Here's how to make the add on sale work: 1)Have a predetermined product for an add on sale in mind. Don't randomly select an item. 2) Make sure your added product will add true value to the sale. 3) Select a moderate price point for the add on product. 4) Have a features/benefits story of why the customer is better off with it. 5) Assume the sale of the add on product. Boost your sales and profits with up selling and using add on selling. Use these methods and watch you income grown.

How To Handle Objections

You know objections are just part of the sales process. That doesn't mean you have to like them. It just means you have to deal with them. All that is needed on some customer objections are clarification of an issue. Others require a litte something more to handle. When you run into the second type use the Feel, Felt, Found method. Here's how it works. The custom states an objection. You say Mr Jones I can see how would feel that way. I have had other people that felt the same way as you do. (This is the Important part) What these others have found after looking closer is....(You fill in the blank). That is why they have now become our most dedicated customers. They tell me they are glad to have made the decision to go with our company. I believe you will have the same experience as they did. Using this method takes a lot of steam out of the objection by first agreeing with the prospect. Then you explain the reason he needs what you offer.

Prospecting by Referral

Referrals are the best source of prospects you can have. You should be asking almost everyone you know for them. Most salespeople ask for referrals in the wrong way if they ask at all. That's why they get so few them. Salespeople will ask IF the other person knows of someone. Another wrong way they ask is DO you know of anyone. Both of these ways will get you few results. Always ask WHO do you know that I might be able to help. Asking WHO will make a difference. It does two things. First, it assumes the other person knows of someone. Second, it gets the other person thinking in terms of who they know. So, start asking WHO!!

Prospecting by Referral