Sales and Sales Management Blog

Over the next couple of days, keep an eye on the salespeople in your office.  Who is associating with whom?  If your office is typical, you’ll probably find the majority of new and average salespeople hang around together, the top producers socialize and go to lunch with one another, and there may be a young up and comer or two who stays kinda off to himself or herself.

Why aren’t the top producers chumming it up with the average and new salespeople?  Is it simply arrogance?  For a few, yes, it’s arrogance.  But for the majority, it isn’t arrogance at all—it’s simply that they have little in common with the lower performers in the office.  They see themselves, what they do, how they do it, and even why they do it differently than the other sellers.

Typically, the top producers are not only working with more accounts than the average and below average producers, they are also dealing with better, more productive accounts.  Most don’t generate their business using the same methods as the lower performers, they don’t use the same selling process, and they don’t develop the same relationships with their prospects and clients.

And most importantly, they don’t have the same attitude and concerns as the other salespeople in the office.

What happens when the new and average salespeople gather at the water cooler or go to lunch together?  Sure, there is some discussion of who’s doing what to get business.  There may be a bit of a discussion of how to overcome obstacles or how to get in to see a particular prospect.  But the majority of the time is spent complaining about how the company doesn’t do this or doesn’t do that; how the sales manager screwed this up or blew that; how bad things are with so much competition, pricing out of the market, late deliveries, products that don’t perform, and all the other excuses salespeople make for not selling.

Those conversations are a far cry from the conversations the top producers have when they go to lunch together.  Their conversation at lunch may touch on the subject of intense competition or late deliveries but instead of griping, their focus is on how they can proactively deal with the issues or mitigate their impact.  But the majority of their conversation about business is on exchanging information that will help them sell.  They want no part of the complaints and moaning and groaning.  They won’t allow themselves the luxury of wallowing in misery because they know it only leads to failure—the attitudes and beliefs developed at the water cooler translate directly to the success or failure of the pipeline.

The top producers focus on success, most of the others focus on excuses for failure.

If you are a new or average salesperson, I urge to consider carefully who you spend time with in your office.  Select not only your mentors carefully, select your companions with equal care.  Keep in mind that the top producers can teach you how to become a top producer, whereas the other new and average salespeople can only teach you how to fail.

Take pains to develop relationships with the best producers around you.  If you are sincerely wanting to learn, have a positive attitude and bring something to the table—even if that is only eagerness and a desire to learn, they will accept you in their group.  It will take time.  It will mean you will have to pursue the relationships.  You will have to work to gain entrance but the payoff is education you cannot possibly get from anyone else in your company.

Don’t allow yourself to become infected with the negative attitudes and beliefs of the majority who surround you because in a very concrete sense, what happens at the water cooler translates directly to your pipeline.

How often have you heard that what you think and what you believe is one of the most important factors in sales success? I imagine you’ve heard that preached so often you’ve almost become numb to it. It’s a theme preached by most sales trainers and managers. You find it in sales books, on training CD’s and DVD’s, you hear it at every conference you attend.

You’re told to repeat positive affirmations, to give yourself positive pep talks, to think positively, to envision yourself being successful, and to imagine yourself giving the perfect presentation or the closing the mega-deal.

Despite the preaching, a surprisingly large number of salespeople take these admonitions with a grain of salt. Some simply think its junk science and blow it off, others don’t believe they need it, others acknowledge they should be doing it but don’t do it, others just let the words go in one ear and out the other, and many others argue that it is what you do–not what you think–that determines your success or failure.

There is, however, solid scientific evidence for the impact imagination and thought has on performance. What you think does translate to some extent to what you do, how you act, and ultimately, what you achieve. Your brain is the single most powerful tool you have and what you feed your brain is translated by your brain into action. Feed your brain negative material and it will generate negative actions. Likewise, feed it positive material and it will generate positive actions.

Subject-Expectancy Effect
The Subject-Expectancy Effect (also known as the Placebo Effect) is an observation by scientists primarily involved in medical research that the recipients of placebos reported the same positive and negative effects as the subjects who received the actual drug being tested. In addition, there are documented cases where the placebo recipient experienced the same physical changes as the recipients of the drug. Scientists have no other explanation than the power of the placebo recipient’s belief changed their physical state. The belief of the recipient in the healing power of the drug they were presumably taking produced the actual physical changes the drug would have produced.

This phenomenon has been observed in the social sciences as well. In experiments, subjects who believed they could not successfully perform even simple tasks managed to unconsciously find ways to sabotage their actions, assuring their expected outcome—failure. The subject’s belief about their abilities influenced their actions to such an extent that they guaranteed they could not do what they had convinced themselves they could not do.

Reshaping the Brain
An experiment at Harvard demonstrates that our imagination not only changes our abilities, but actually changes the shape of our brain in the same way as performing the actual act.

Researchers at Harvard placed a group of people who could not play the piano in a room with a piano and a teacher who gave intensive lessons for five days. A second group was placed in another room with an identical piano but told to have nothing to do with the instrument. A third group was put into a room with another identical piano but told to do nothing but imagine practicing the piano—they never touched the instrument.

After five days, the first group had a rudimentary ability to play. The second group, of course, couldn’t play a lick.

The third group who had never touched the piano could play almost as well as the first group. More astounding, the brains of the third group had undergone the same physical change in the area that controls finger movement as the first group.

Simply imagining performing the act had almost the same affect as actually performing it.

Changing Your Sales Business
Salespeople and managers who argue that actions—both positive and negative—determine success or failure in sales are correct. You either make the sales or you don’t. You either connect with qualified prospects or you don’t. You either develop the relationships with your prospects and clients or you don’t.

Nevertheless, there is solid evidence that the actions you take aren’t independent of your belief system or your thoughts. The ultimate determination of your success lies in your head. What you think, what you imagine, and what you believe about yourself will find its way into your actions. If you feed your brain success, it will demand you take the actions to become successful. On the other hand, feed your brain defeat and your brain will accommodate that outcome also.

Excerpted from SuperStar Selling: 12 Keys to Becoming a Sales SuperStar by Paul McCord, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all find bookstores.

Flip through some random job descriptions for frontline sales managers on CareerBuilder or Monster.  Take a look at the job descriptions for frontline sales managers from a number of industries.  Look closely at the responsibilities and duties the manager is expected to handle.  What do you find?

The Job Duties
If you’ll take the time to look at least a dozen—preferably more—you’ll find a whole slew of duties that frontline managers are expected to perform such as:
•    Recruiting and hiring salespeople–and often clerical staff
•    Training, coaching and mentoring those people
•    Resolving customer issues
•    Coordinating and working with other departments such as shipping, manufacturing, underwriting, finance, etc.
•    Monitoring the local market and competition and keeping management informed of market changes and opportunities
•    Creating and implementing a local sales and marketing plan
•    P&L responsibility for the local office or branch
•    Conduct sales and training meetings
•    Complete reports for management on a weekly, monthly and annual basis
•    Create annual office or branch budget
•    Create monthly and annual sales projections
•    Operate as company’s ambassador to the community by attending community events and maintaining a high visibility in the community
•    Other duties as assigned

And then the kicker:
•    Maintain a high level of personal sales activity and personal production

The first dozen responsibilities listed above are management activities that are—or should be—critical to the growth and profitability of the company.  Most of these activities require someone with strong management, problem solving, and analytical skills.  To properly perform these activities, the individual must have a frame of reference to resolve customer issues, to develop sales and marketing plans, to maximize the return on assets, to properly analyze the local market and competition, and especially, to recruit, train and mentor salespeople.

Only the last item is a purely in-the-trenches sales activity related item.  Yet, as anyone who has been in sales understands, to meet that requirement of ‘maintain a high level of personal sales,” selling must be a full-time job.

The Requirements For The Job
Go further into the job description and you find the ‘requirements’ section, describing the background and experience this individual must have to be considered for the job.  Most typically, that description includes these items:
•    3-5 years direct industry sales experience
•    Proven high level of production, meeting or exceeding quota
•    Strong product knowledge
•    Proven industry contacts and book of business

What’s missing in the requirements for this position?  Of course, not a single word about management skills, aptitude, training or ability.

And how is this individual typically paid?  Usually some combination of base salary, commissions and overrides, or worse, overrides and commissions.

Does It Make Sense?
The above list of responsibilities was gathered from a number of job postings from a number of industries including retail, banking, insurance, securities, medical, software, chemical, consulting, and others.  Most of these job postings listed a majority of the above requirements including the personal production requirement.

Although traditional in many industries, does this combination of duties make sense?  If it does:
•    why are so many offices in these industries poorly run?
•    Why the constant harping by senior management for the offices to keep costs down?
•    Why complaints by marketing that leads aren’t being followed up?
•    Why the complaints by manufacturing and shipping that didn’t know certain things about various orders?
•    Why are commission checks so often wrong?
•    Why is the training and coaching in these companies so poor?
•    Why are so many poor hiring decisions made by the company’s sales managers?

The list could go on.

The reason of course is obvious.  The company didn’t hire a manager, they hired a salesperson to try to keep the herd in line and hopefully end up with the sales numbers the company wanted—and that sales manager is expected to make sure they do through his or her personal sales.

Sales management as so often practiced today is hardly deserving of the term.  And despite the onus being placed on the sales manager by the company, the problem doesn’t lie with the sales manager.  Typically, the company got exactly what they wanted—a top salesperson willing to assume responsibility they haven’t been prepared for in exchange for a title.

Can Companies Afford to Continue This Way?
For most companies, selling is becoming a bigger and bigger challenge.  Competition is fierce, their products are most often indistinguishable from their competitor’s, their markets are becoming more fragmented, their prospects are better educated and more demanding than ever before.

Management as a sideline, although traditional in a great number of industries, is costing companies billions of dollars every year in lost opportunities, bad hires, poor local market decisions, lack of resource utilization and lost sales.

In a complex world with razor sharp competition and astute prospects who often know more than the people trying to sell to them, companies can no longer afford to use management positions as rewards for past production.  Frontline managers are increasingly becoming the focal point of a company’s success or failure.

Many companies have already begun to change their management philosophy and have eliminated the selling manager position and have replaced them with full-time, qualified, and trained managers.  To this end, they have instituted manager training and coaching programs hiring outside companies and coaches to work with their new and existing management staff.

Take Action Now
If you are in a producing manager role, hire a sales management coach to help you prepare for the realities of the changing environment you are entering.  Those items within your job description that haven’t been emphasized in the past are becoming increasingly important.

If you’re a senior manager, consider whether a producing manager is really worth the lost revenue and lost opportunities.  Your company’s selling environment isn’t going to get easier.

Seldom do I read a book that I consider to be dangerous. Certainly, there are books that once read, you think, “Wow! I hope a new salesperson doesn’t get hold of this and think this is what sales is all about.” We’ve all read the books, the ones that advocate heavy doses of manipulation, browbeating the customers, twisting their arm, hog tying them until they give in.

Nevertheless, PeopleSavvy For Sales Professionals (Savvy Books, 2007) by Gregory Stebbins, Ed.D. is a dangerous book of a different kind, a danger that Stebbins immediately acknowledges in his introduction. PeopleSavvy deals with the psychological strategies and techniques of selling and developing trust—strategies and techniques that can be used to help create a bond–or to manipulate and deceive.

In the right hands, the book can open new ways to build relationships quickly. In the wrong hands, it can reveal ways to out fox, out maneuver, and out and out manipulate. The responsibility for the information’s use lies with the reader, Dr. Stebbins has simply shown how understanding your prospect’s behavior and thinking can help you connect—and an unfortunate byproduct is to show others how they can manipulate.

Stebbins’ thesis is that if your prospects don’t trust you, you cannot sell effectively. That thesis springboards Stebbins in a discussion of how you can read your prospect’s movements, her words, how he dresses, what she has on the walls of her office—even the position of the items in his office, and use that information to build a deeper connection more quickly with the prospect, gaining their confidence and trust at the same time.

Although the book is quite detailed on the ‘how’ to read your prospects behavior and the other telltale signs to help build trust, Stebbins breaks trust into two parts and feeds them to us in bite sized morsels.

Trust is comprised of ‘Rapport’, which itself is made up of compassion, connection and credibility, and ‘Deep Trust,’ which is comprised of competence, commitment and consistency. Stebbins takes the reader through each of these individual components of Rapport and Deep Trust and how each must play a role in developing a relationship of trust with your prospect.

He then journeys through how motivation, communication and behavior can reveal the avenues to developing the rapport and trust you must have to develop a lasting relationship with your prospect.

From mirroring behavior to matching speech patterns and words to understanding personality types to how the prospect thinks and operates, PeopleSavvy covers the gamut from not only understanding your prospect’s behavior, to how they think and why they think the way they do.

Filled with stories and examples, PeopeSavvy is an easy to read—harder to apply—book whose insights, strategies and techniques are grounded in the works of those, including Stebinns, who have spent years studying sales, marketing, and industrial psychology.

If you want to understand how to get inside the head of your prospects and clients, PeopleSavvy will help open the door to their minds. Whether what you learn is dangerous or not depends on your intent and use.

I acquired a new coaching client a couple of weeks ago.  Richard has been selling IT consulting services for over 10 years.  He has always been a top producer.  He works hard, makes sure that his clients are delighted with both the service and the results they get from him and the company he sells for, and he knows his industry inside out.

Richard makes well into the six figures—well, well into the six figures.  And he is miserable, depressed, and vaguely thinking about moving away from sales and into management even though he loves sales.  In fact, until six months ago, he had never considered management.  He liked the freedom, the income, and the activity of selling.  He wanted no part of the chains of management.

So, what would cause someone making that kind of money, who absolutely loves what he is doing to decide almost on the spur of the moment to make such a radical change?  Why would he be willing to take on a position he has purposely avoided for years?

Richard hired me to do what he thought he’d never need help doing—getting his career back on track.  As things are right now, his income in 2008 is going to drop almost 60% from last year.  He is in crisis mode—so much so he hired a coach, is contemplating moving into management, and is so depressed he doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

How could this happen to a top producer?  What changed so dramatically in the past few months that could cause this?

It isn’t the economy.

It isn’t the company he sold for.

It isn’t the company he now sells for.

It’s worse than any of these.  Richard brought this upon himself.  He is the sole cause of his current problems, and he did it without even knowing he was doing it.

Richard changed employers about six months ago.  He had been with his previous employer for over seven years.  He had built one of the strongest sales businesses in the company.  His clients were top companies with tons of repeat business.  Sure, he brought in new clients, but the vast majority of his business was repeat business—business he could count on, business he knew was there and was going to be there.

But there had been some management and philosophy changes in the company that Richard didn’t think would serve him or his clients well.  As the changes and his dissatisfaction mounted, he eventually decided it was time to make a move.

He talked to a number of companies and finally found a new home with a much smaller company, but one whose philosophy, quality and responsiveness was very similar to his old company’s in earlier years.

He expected to hit the ground running, bringing in a ton of business as he moved his former clients over to the new company.

It didn’t happen.  To date, six months after joining his new firm, few of his former clients have made the move.  In fact, he has to resell all of them.  It is, in his words, “worse than starting over.”

Yes, he can get in the door to meet with them, that’s not a problem.  But he has to un-sell everything he sold previously, because what he had sold his clients on wasn’t him; instead he sold the company he had been selling for.

His former employer was a big, well-known name.  They had a reputation for excellence, integrity, and superior service and value.  Richard sold the devil out of those things.  He assured his prospects that they would get the service and attention they wanted and needed; their needs would addressed quickly and with a focus on saving them time and money; and should he ever leave the company or become unable to manage their account, the company had the personnel and resources to step in and take care of them as though nothing had happened.

He believed that since he had done such a great job of selling and maintaining the relationship, his clients would naturally go where he went.  His clients were his and would be loyal to him, and if he decided it would be better for them to follow him to another company, they would naturally follow.

Richard had done a great job of selling.  His clients are loyal.  They are believers.

Richard’s problem is he sold the wrong thing.  He sold the company he worked for, not himself.  He sold the image, prestige and reputation of the company he was selling for instead of selling his dedication, professionalism, and commitment to the client.  He convinced his clients that it was the company he sold for that was going to provide the service, making sure everything went smoothly, and that their problems and issues were taken care in short order.

Richard misunderstood in a very fundamental way what selling is—or rather, what is being sold.  Moreover, Richard isn’t alone.  Hundreds of thousands of salespeople are on the street everyday selling the wrong thing.

Selling at its core is about selling yourself.  The products you sell are probably indistinguishable from the products your competitor sells.  More than likely your company, like every other company, claims to have superior customer service.  It is highly doubtful you have the lowest prices or offer the most value in your industry everyday.

So, if the products you sell are virtually the same as your competitors, the claims the company makes are the same as your competitors, and the pricing and value are similar to your competitors, what distinguishes your sale from your competitor’s offer?  You.

Actually, you are the sale.
•    You are the one who is going to make sure the customer’s purchasing experience is satisfactory, not the company you’re selling for.
•    You’re the one who is going to make sure things get done as they are supposed to, not the company you’re selling for.
•    You’re the one who is going to negotiate the land mines that can blow up a sale, not the company you’re selling for.
•    You’re the one who must take responsibility for the customer’s purchase, not the company you’re selling for.

Further, a funny thing happens when you sell the company rather than yourself.  When you sell the company, the customer becomes loyal to the company.  When things go well, the company gets the credit.  But when things go poorly, you get the blame.

If you want to establish a long-term, successful sales business, you must understand the basic nature of sales.  You don’t work for anyone other than yourself.  You are your company; you’ve just contracted with a single supplier to sell for them for the time being.  The customers you bring to the company you’re currently selling for are your customers, not theirs.

But as Richard learned, if you’re selling the company instead of yourself, you’re giving your business and your future away for free, and when you decide it is time to sell for a different supplier, you’ll find yourself starting over scratch once more.

The Sales and Sales Management Blog is going to change a little. Since I’ve added The Management Curve blog to the lineup, it has become too demanding to post 7 days a week on each site.

To this point, I’ve posted full length articles written by myself and other top sales trainers and consultants. That’s going to change a bit also.

Starting this week, I’ll post four or 5 days a week instead of seven. The posts are going to be a combination of my full length articles, my observations about the profession of selling, some quick sales tips, pointing out some of the other fine postings on the internet, and some full length articles by other trainers and consultants.

The two major changes will be the fewer posts, although there will still be a post on almost every weekday, and fewer full length articles.

I think this change will not only make the blog a little less demanding on me, but will also make it more interesting with a variety of posts instead of simply full length training articles.

Certainly, if you have suggestions, please let me know. And by all means, if you run across something good on the net that should be referenced on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, please shoot me an email.

Paul

Sales metrics, those pesky sales and activity numbers—hated and loathed by salespeople, and often for good reason.

In many companies (most?), the bit of metrics data the sales manager and company get on their sales team members is used only for the purpose of harassing, browbeating, and threatening the salespeople.

Call reports turn into demands for the salesperson to make more calls. Commission reports are used to highlight weak sales and demand more calls. Pipeline reports are used to demonstrate a lack of activity and to demand more calls.

So what happens to the call and pipeline reports? They get padded. Salespeople have learned that if you’re just going to use it as a bat to beat them with, they’re not going to cut the tree down for you.

With the ‘metrics’ available to managers from the traditional call, pipeline, customer status, and commission reports it is very difficult to isolate the root issues a salesperson has. It can be done. It takes study, practice and well developed analytical skills and real knowledge of the salesperson involved.

Unfortunately, that’s a lot of work. So, many managers take the easy way out—take a quick look, determine the root cause is not enough calls and demand more. It makes no difference if call quantity is an issue or not. It makes little difference if the salesperson has been properly trained in prospecting and personal marketing strategies. It makes no difference if the real issue is their interpersonal skills, their communication skills, their presentation skills, or their ability to probe, identify and solve prospect issues. The answer is usually the same—make more calls.

Since the salesperson sees no benefit from developing accurate reports—but certainly sees a very real determent, is it any wonder the reports are fanciful?

Now, what happens when the company institutes an automated system and demands compliance to faithfully use the system? Resistance, of course. From the salesperson’s point of view, all the automated system is going to do is give the manager and the company a bigger bat to beat them with.

Yet, salespeople can be taught to relish sales metrics. Certainly not by using the data the way it’s been used in the past, but by using it to proactively help the salesperson make more money.

The information gathered by an automated system—in fact, even that puff of information generated by traditional reports—can literally change a salesperson’s career if used properly. Even a reasonable handful of accurate data can pinpoint real issues and real root problems that hinder a salesperson’s performance. The data in the hands of someone who has been properly trained to analyze the information can be used to create an individualized training and coaching program for each team member.

If salespeople understand the information makes them money through pinpoint training and coaching, improving their skills, getting them to comply with using the system and producing accurate data—even a handwritten or very basic spreadsheet system—isn’t an issue. Most salespeople want to sell more. They want to earn more. They want to excel. But those same salespeople have no desire to be consistently beaten over the head.

If you want accurate reports from your salespeople, think seriously about why you want them and exactly what you’re going to do with them. If can’t or won’t use them to help your salespeople become better salespeople, don’t even bother to ask for them because what you get will be designed to keep you off their back as long as possible.

On the other hand, if you’re goal is to help your team become the best salespeople they can be and to grow your team’s sales, communicate to your team in no uncertain terms what the purpose of the reports is and then stick to it—use them as training and mentoring tools, not bats. It will take some time to get the response you desire because salespeople have been taught—either at your company or by a previous manager—that metrics aren’t to be trusted.

If you or your managers need help in learning how to thoroughly analyze and use the reports as training and coaching tools, hire a company such as McCord Training or any of the other consulting and coaching companies that specialize in the area. But whether you need outside help or not, you can have salespeople who welcome sales metrics—and the side benefit is the reports you have in your hand will actually have some relationship to reality.

Would you like to learn more about how the new sales technology is going to impact salespeople, managers and companies? Visit The Management Curve where I’ve gathered a group of sales management and tech consultants, sales performance researchers, and CRM, Sales Performance Management and Sales Force Automation developers to discuss the real world impact of technology on the sales force.

Even though things are getting tougher, you don’t have let that slow your sales. In fact, you can increase your sales by doing what the top mega-producers do—learn how to generate a large number of high quality referrals from each of your clients and even from your prospects.

Join Paul McCord for the most comprehensive and effective webinar there is on selling through referrals:

Mining The Gold In Your Database

Top producers don’t spend countless hours cold calling. They spend a fortune on direct mail. They’re not faxing and emailing fliers all over the place.

Top producers have learned how to turn their clients into referral machines.

You can get 4, 5, 6, even 8 to 10 high quality referrals from EVERY one of your clients.

Join Paul McCord for a 2-hour intense webinar on

Thursday, May 3

from 3 to 5 PM Central Time

What You’ll Learn:

• The psychology of referral selling:
  • Why clients resist giving good referrals and how to build the relationship that overcomes that reluctance
  • Why referred prospects won’t meet with you and how to approach them in a way that will get you the appointment
  • Why simply asking for referrals is doomed to failure
• How to make giving you a ton of high quality referrals so easy for your client that they’ll give you as many as you want
• How to turn your business into a Referral-based business
• The absolute one thing your client MUST know in order to give you referrals
• How to keep getting 4, 5, 6 or more high quality referrals from EVERY one of the clients in your database year after year after year

Learn referral selling from the man who wrote the authoritative book on referral selling.

Don’t let a slower economy blow your year—instead blow your pipeline up with quality prospects and lots more sales.

Who Should Attend?

• Salespeople in relationship driven business-to-business or business-to-consumer sales
• Sales managers
• Sales trainers
• Business owners
• Independent professionals

Thursday, May 8 3-5 PM Central Time

Two-hour webinar only $89 per person

Register NOW

Rules for Negotiating on the Tradeshow Floor
By Susan Friedmann

Negotiation, apparently, is the word of the day.  You can’t turn on the tv, flip the radio dial, or cruise any of the popular online news sites without running into the concept: it’s possible, even probable, that you can save money simply by asking vendors for a lower price.  After all, with the pressures of a down economy, people are far more desperate to close the sale, and if that means cutting into the margin, so be it!  Better half a bushel, after all, than nothing at all.

What does this mean to exhibitors?

Well, it means a lot of things, but we’re going to talk about two of them here.

First: You need to be prepared for attendees who want to negotiate.

You’re not the only one being exposed to this media frenzy around the age-old concept of haggling.  It has influenced the people coming to the show!  However, that means you’ll be dealing with people who may be completely new to negotiating, who are clumsy and awkward, overly bold or flat out obnoxious.

Do your booth staffers a favor, and give them a head’s up that this is coming.  If they’ve any sales experience at all, this won’t be a new experience for them, but the quantity can be unsettling.  If you’ve a novice booth staffer, you’ll want to take some time to prep them in the nuances of on the floor negotiating: let them know what they’re empowered to do, how much wiggle room they’ve got, and what your company expectations are.

Make sure that the policy regarding show floor negotiation is well known and understood by every booth staffer.

Second: The relationship is the primary focus of tradeshow exhibiting.

The emphasis on negotiation can easily transform the tradeshow forum into a price-driven arena.  This is a mistake!  Make sure your team is aware of the value of relationships, and equip them with the tools they need to identify, qualify, and work with prospects.  This does mean you’ll lose a sale or two: there will always be someone who can low-ball you on price.  However, by emphasizing benefits and working on building a mutually beneficial relationship over the long term, you’ll be positioning yourself for success — and when the economy bounces back, you’ll be ready.

Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, author: “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies,” working with companies to improve their meeting and event success through coaching, consulting and tradeshow training. For a free copy of “10 Common Mistakes Exhibitors Make”, e-mail: article4@thetradeshowcoach.com; website: www.thetradeshowcoach.com

Do you have your profile on Linkedin? If so, have you been actively using it to help you grow your business? Have you figured out HOW to use it? Is it even worth the time and effort?

Although it is the granddaddy of business social networks, a great many who have posted their profiles haven’t used it to its fullest potential; certainly, I’m one. Spending time on the site trying to discover its potential hasn’t been a priority for me as it hasn’t for many others.

Like most, I’ve posted a bland profile, get an occasional request to connect, and visit it once in a blue moon. I, like most, invest little or no time and then wonder why it doesn’t help my business.

If you’re like me—and chances are you are, then I recommend you read a new free ebook, Can Linkedin Increase Your Sales?, written by my friend Jill Konrath. Jill has just released the ebook and—shock of shocks—is giving it away free and you don’t have to sign up for anything—just download it.

That in itself is unheard of.

But the best part is the book is good—unlike so many free ebooks that are all hype and designed to do nothing but sell another product or service, this ebook gives real advice and real strategies to help you generate business on Linkedin.

Don’t belong to Linkedin but belong to another business social network? Get the book. Many of the strategies can be transferred to any social networking site.