"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is temporary detour, not a dead end". - Denis Waitley 

In every sales conversation some risk is involved. Risks include appearing unqualified, appearing to not understand the prospect’s business, not being understood by the client, and that your price is too high.

Because salespeople are afraid of those risks—afraid of failure—they do things they think will reduce the risk, and in reality they increase the risk, says Charles H. Green in his article How You’re Unknowingly Increasing Sales Risk.

Are you responsible for:
 

•     Generating new business?
•     Networking with your current contacts?
•     Building relationships?
•     Writing proposals?
•     Fielding sales calls?
•     Going on sales meetings?
•     Managing clients?
•     Delivering work?
•     Building tighter bonds with clients?
•     Cross-selling?
•     Managing people?
•     Setting the strategy for your firm?

Have you noticed that suddenly you’re negotiating with your customers and prospects through email? They don’t have time for face-to-face or phone meetings. Instead, they’d just like “a few quick questions” answered through email so they can make a decision.

As this occurs, it’s critical that sales reps adjust their easy-going sales prospecting email approach to a more formal and professional business writing style to successfully negotiate in this new manner.

When you’re out on the web checking out blog posts, articles, white papers, podcasts, and webinars, do you get bored? I know I do. Save for a few of my favorite writers, presenters, and sources, I find so many people say the same things—provide the same advice—and don’t offer original viewpoints.

This year-end is going to be tough on small businesses as economist have already predicted that the holiday season would likely not be all that great. This is a good time to scrutinize your business and discard what isn’t working and can be done away with. You may need to rethink your approach to achieving your business’ goals. Apart from that hold on to cash as much as possible, for example delay paying bills now that can be paid in January, you can also work up a plan to pay them in installments. Next start lining up work for 2011.

Every activity, project, or goal is built upon certain basic or core elements.  If these elements are not working properly then no matter what you do, you will find yourself frequently coming across hurdles in doing that activity successfully or even failing the task completely. Take your health for example, if you want to be healthy you need to maintain a balanced diet, exercise regularly, take adequate rest, and live in clean, healthy surroundings. If you don’t do these things right, no amount of diets, supplements, medicines, or fads are going to work for you.

Social media is a hot topic in business circles and most companies have either jumped into it or are raring to go. But there is a disturbing aside to all this brouhaha about how social media can help business most people who have business leaders that have been using this new method for marketing are clueless about calculating the ROI. Either they are not thinking in terms of ROI or they do not have a way to measure it. But the reality is that although social media platforms maybe free using them involves expertise, planning and dedicated resources all this add up to considerable expenses.