Making Sales in the Present Economy

The best way by far to learn how to sell in the present economy is to take a few lessons from the past.

When I first got into learning how to sell, the economy was not to good.

I am sure the economy was in about the same shape as it is now or at least it was in Amarillo Texas where I started my sales career.

At the time I was a young 22 year old man and not very news oriented. I only listened to local music radio stations and watched sports are sitcoms on TV.

There was no such thing as cable or satellite TV so there was only the three major net works available in my area anyway.

Not having a clue that the economy was bad may have been a good thing.
All of my mentors had grown up during the great depression so they knew exactly what to do.

The first thing I was taught was to find out who in the neighborhood I was working at the time had a job. Yes the times were that tough.
When checking out a new neighborhood to work I was looking for signs of life in the homes I was walking or driving past. I was then watching for toys and items of interest that would be a clue as to which familys had children.

The product I was selling was a highly advertised national brand of encyclopedia. Most sets were sold to families with children for help with their school work.

Depending on what you are selling you will have to look for different things.

If you sell home improvements for example, you are looking for homes that need repair.

If you sell Medicare supplements you will be looking for homes that belong to the elderly.

So what you look for depends on what you are prospecting for.

So in my case the first order of business was to learn and also practice being very observant and aware of my surroundings.

After checking out a few blocks of a prospective neighborhood and seeing where the most likely prospects were I would stop and talk to the nosey neighbors in the area. I would see them setting on the front porches of some of these homes.

These busy bodies would be setting on their porches watching with an eagle eye for anything out of the ordinary.

So me being a stranger to the neighborhood they always wanted to check me out and find out what I was doing.

This worked to my advantage and helped me do all of the detective work I needed to do to size up the neighbor hood.

I would explain a little about my product and get the low down on all of the neighbors. These people were all ways eager to help me.

With their help I would get family names and what grades the children were in as well as where the parents worked and when they came home.

Armed with this information I was way ahead of the game and could easily approach and get in to two or three homes in the evening allowing me to make one or two sales most days.

The nosey neighbors with out really knowing it were providing me with great referrals and easy entry into homes.

Some other things we did to find prospects in those day was to find flea markets, home shows and even shopping malls where they had grocery stores are book stores I could work.

I would pay a small rental or in some cases locations would work on a per sale basis.
In either case I would set up a small counter at the location and find prospects or make sales right on the spot.

This became a very lucrative way of making money and I have used this method with numerous products I have sold over the years.

In this day and age any thing still
works just like it did then, providing you also work and put out the effort.

Thank you,

Billy J Gibson
http://www.thesellingfool.com
Thesellingfoolbjg@yahoo.com