I have been bombarded with emails of late that selling representatives are having difficult finding new prospects. The role of a selling representative is similar to that of a detective, one must play the slueth to discover new secrets to the clues. Yet, in 26 years I find that too many professionals make it too difficult on themselves. Finding the clients is easy, one need to step away and not look so hard into the lens here are three examples:

Business News
I believe that not enough sales professionals read The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or other major national periodicals.This is a must for your profession.

To properly service your customers you must understand their successes, feel their trials and tribulations and help to downplay competitive and marketplace pressures. Reading a major periodical will apprise you of new customer news and keep you abreast of business changes.

Not enough time to read through the papers; then subscribe to these papers e-mail bulletin services for real-time updates. You should commit 30 minutes per day to reading the business section front to back.

Industry News
As important as the real-time business news is, you must clearly understand the industry you service. It is your job to follow the industry news. Perhaps you are servicing a niche industry such as I do in Wall Street Technology. Ask your clients and contacts about the periodicals they read to follow industry trends. Your clients will definitely tell you.

Additionally, subscribe to particular association newsletters. These succinct periodicals continually apprise you of industry issues.

Google Alerts

The unique clipping service from Google provides you the abilty to set keywords and terms, automatically researching the Internet for those terms. I have mine set for companies, industries, companies and particular representatives. The moment I receive something and if worthy enough I send an email or call a prospective client.

Certainly in today’s fast passed information crazed environment, there is little time to access more information. However, clients want sales professionals that understand the business, understand competitive issues and help them. Clients want trust, they want service and they want relationships. Take the time to learn their business and your efforts will be rewarded.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 5:52 am and is filed under Sales Training, sales and marketing, sales coaching, sales help, sales skills, sales strategy, sales techniques, sales trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.