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15 Sales Tips To Start Selling Smarter In 2008

Written by: Jim Meisenheimer

Article Overview: These 15 sales tips provide an excellent jumpstart to 2008 enabling you gain an advantage over your competition.

15 Sales Tips To Start Selling Smarter In 2008

Here are 15 sales tips you can use to sell smarter during 2008. With the right sales motivation, you can become as successful as you want to be!

However, you must come to grips with this fact. If you aren't outrageously successful at this moment, thinking about it won't make it happen.

The end of the year is a busy time of the year for most of us, I know it is for me. I'm looking at where I've been this year, where I am at this moment, and where I want to be at the end of 2008.

Here is a short list of 15 sales tips you can use to make 2008 your best sales year ever:

1. Analyze what worked for you during 2007.

2. Likewise - analyze what didn't work for you during 2007.

3. Establish personal and professional goals in writing for 2008 - goal-setting is critical for sales success.

4. Put these goals on a white board in your office - the bigger the white board the better. If you can't see your goals you're less to stay focused on them throughout the new year.

5. Create written action plans, and the emphasis is written, for all goals with specific completion dates - these dates should be added to your electronic calendar.

6. Call your biggest and best customers and thank them, again, for their business.

7. Get the biggest trash can liner you can find and toss away everything that isn't absolutely essential to your success. Go through your office, your car, and your briefcase. Clutter has no place in an organized office. It just gets in the way, even blocks, your momentum.

8. Ask yourself, "What is holding you back?" It's a serious question which deserves some serious thought. It's stupid to do the same stupid things over and over!

9. Ask your sales manager what his priorities are for 2008. Don't assume you know what they are. Listen carefully to his response.

10. You should also ask your best customers the same question. Ask them what their challenges are for the new year. Ask them how they're planning to grow their business in the new year. Ask them how they're planning to measure success with their suppliers. These questions and others found in my book titled, "The 12 Best Questions To Ask Customers" will give you a significant advantage over your competitors.

11. Allocate 30 minutes a day to reading about your profession - okay listening to CDs is acceptable. This requires discipline. You will become an expert and a giant in your industry if you do this. If you don't, you'll just be in step with the mediocrity brigade. This sales tips is easy to say and hard to do. Do it and you'll be rewarded with more sales and of course added wisdom.

12. Get involved with a mastermind group which means starting one if you have to. My group, Masters Speakers International, of course we had to give it a sexy name, has been meeting four times a year for 10 years. My time with this group of talented people has made a huge difference in my life and in my business.

13. I can't tell you how many e-mails I receive saying, "as soon as I start making more money, I'm going to start buying some of your products." Unfortunately, good intentions won't make you outrageously successful. Investing in yourself is a requirement, not something that depends on your income. Your personal business Library is a good predictor of your future success. You can't put a price on a good idea. And it takes a steady stream of good ideas to become outrageously successful.

14. Here's another sales tip - don't try to do everything yourself. You'd be absolutely amazed at what you can outsource for a very reasonable price. The next time you have a small project you wish you could give to somebody else, go to www.elance.com and see what they can do for you. You just might be surprised!

15. Finally, it's impossible to be good at everything. If there is something that you are not good at and you need to be good at it, for Pete's sake hire a sales coach. A good sales coach won't cost you anything. Yup, a good coach doesn't cost, he pays. A good coach can help convert your sales weaknesses into sales strengths. If you like what you read in my Newsletters, you'll love what I can do for you as your sales coach. See my website for details.

Look - you can use these 15 sales tips to start selling more in 2008! You deserve it!

It sad but true, not everybody wants to be outrageously successful.

Some people don't want to be accountable for their results - they prefer a pity party. Some people prefer mediocrity over superiority. Why would anyone ever think like that?

Some people postpone living to sometime in the future, when in fact the only time we are guaranteed is today.

We live in a great country, we really do. Sure things aren't always hunky-dory. But you sure do have to admit that America has unlimited opportunities for those who have desire, focus, ** discipline **, commitment, passion, and a great deal of enthusiasm for life and for business.

Van VanBebber says, in The Wall Street Journal, "We should all save and study more, and spend and weigh less." That's pretty good advice as we head into the New Year.

His advice, however, requires a great deal of self-discipline. Are you up for it?

Becoming outrageously successful also requires a great deal of self-discipline.

Do you have what it takes to do what it takes to become outrageously successful?

Here's your choice - you have it or you've had it!

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Article Tags: briefcase, can liner, challenges, clutter, electronic calendar, goal setting, momentum, motivation, new year, priorities, professional goals, sales success, stupid things, trash



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