Another day another dollar is the old saying, but sometimes another day comes with no dollar at all.
When your in sales, and commission is your mode of earning, no sales adds up to no dollars. So you gotta get out there and sell. Easier said than done these days. The old ways just don’t work like they use to.
It’s not too long ago, we did cold calling. Call the potential customer, hope to set up an appointment based on the info you have to offer that will intrigue and spark the curiosity of the customer. “Please allow me a few moments of your time to further explain how my product may help you to reduce the amount of time it takes you to do that household task.(or whatever) And for that I’ll give you _(blank)_ just for allowing me to come and demonstrate.” Oh boy, something free for just spending a little time. This takes time on the salesman’s part and time on the customers part. Time is money. Money is not something that is spent as prevalently as it use to be since the fall of the economy. But that isn’t anything I need to tell anyone, we all know that fact.
What we may not know is how rapidly the market is changing and how business is being done these days is not anything like it has been done in the past. Remember the Great Depression generation complaining “They just don’t make anything like they use to.” That was a very true statement. Back in the day, use to be when something broke you got it fixed. Then the throw away market came to town and it became cheaper to buy new than it was to fix it. Usually couldn’t fix it anyway because you couldn’t buy just the part that was broke. So more and more, as time went on the Mr. Fix It Repair Shop became obsolete. Or as I like to say, the product market evolved.
Nothing evolves overnight, it takes time and energy, and money, and patients, and some people complain, and some rejoice, and some just don’t even know that anything is different. It all depends on how old you are and what you are being raised with or what you have seen in your life time in the way of change. Some people accept this change or evolution of the world and some don’t.
Now, if we look deeply at what is happening in today’s world, we can see another evolution occuring. This evolution is not so much about the product as it is about how we buy the product. We use to look to commercials to tell us what is good and what we should buy. But we learned we can’t depend on advertising because of the false claims we got jipped on too many times. People began to ask one another, ” Have you tried that? Did it work? How did you like it? Did they treat you fair? Did they stand behind their product?” We needed to find the truth and to be able to put trust in someone that knew the truth. This was done talking face to face with a friend or colleague, or somethimes just a passer by. Now days, we still need the truth and above all the trust, so the trend is changing to social networking on the Internet. Sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter,rss feed, ning.com, and others are the way of the future. This is not a fad, this is here to stay. Want to know how something works, just put it out there and someone will respond. You may or may not know them, but I guarentee you’ll get a response and you won’t have to wait long for it either. You can find the best price, the best review, the best service, the best of the best on just about anything you want by asking the right question…”Does anybody out there know…” Why a friend of mine even found the best place to park when he went to a sporting event last week. All he did was get on Twitter and ask “Going to Lucas Oil Stadium. Does anybody out there know a great place to park, cheap?” With in the hour he had several people answer and primo parking for the best price.
Want to know anything about anything? Don’t use your mouth and ask a person, use your fingers and ask the world. Because this is another day and there is another way. Social networking is here to stay.
