MSI Blog

If you're alive and breathing, you know things are slow right now, economically speaking. If you're a salesperson who is responsible to make revenues happen, you're keenly aware of the economic slowdown.

Following are the first seven of "The 21 Attributes of Extraordinarily Effective Salespeople." These are the attributes I've noted in other successful salespeople I've known over the years and have worked to develop in my own sales life. I'll share more in future blog posts.

Here are the first seven of the 21 attributes for your consideration:

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Would I sound arrogant if I were to say I have it all? I suppose that depends on what I really mean when I say those words.

I do have it all. And so do you. I'm talking about those things we need to be successful. I'm talking about a mindset. I'm talking about what we choose to see and believe.

A couple of years ago, I became keenly aware of something I had heard about, but clearly had not subscribed to fully in my life. It's called the abundance mentality. Since my personal discovery of this concept, my life has changed in ways I can't even begin to tell you. Good ways. Positive ways. Ways I could have never engineered on my own. I've simply come to believe that everything I need is out there for me-someone has it and is willing to give it to me. In return, I can regularly be the answer to someone else's need and give what I have.

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Tell me if this sounds familiar: Another week has passed, and once again you didn't get to those marketing activities you had hoped to finish. You're busy running your business and taking care of your clients, which is important; but you know you also need to get to your marketing efforts or, in time, you won't have business to take care of. You're frustrated. And you feel you're caught in this revolving door that just won't stop.

You're not alone.

Here's my simple suggestion to you: Just like you make time to eat, sleep, fulfill orders, and follow up on overdue receivables, you need to make time for your marketing. And we're not talking about a lot of time, necessarily.

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You've probably completed a SWOT Analysis for your company before. If you haven't, "SWOT" is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is an eye-opening and important activity for you to undertake once or twice a year.

There is plenty of information on how to conduct a SWOT Analysis available on the Internet, so I won't take any time to discuss those basics here. But I do want to make one important point that, for some reason, has been missed in the traditional approach to conducting a SWOT Analysis.

In the information I've found, the first two areas of the analysis--strengths and weaknesses--are handled as internal issues, while opportunities and threats are addressed as external forces. I submit to you most directly that if one only sees opportunities and threats as external to their business, that's a recipe for disaster. Internal opportunities can be some of the strongest and most readily actionable, while internal threats often represent the most menacing and destructive.

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We listen to our favorite songs over and over. We probably even watch good movies more than once. So why are we so quick to discontinue worthwhile marketing campaigns and activities when they have proven fruitful?

It happens often, and just happened again last week. I get talking to business owners and marketing people about what has worked for them in the past and BINGO, we hit on gold. The revelation usually sounds something like this: "Wow! I hadn't thought about that campaign for a long time, but it worked really well when we used it."

Well, if it worked then, it just may work now. There's a simple way to find out. Test it. Don't think that just because something worked in the past it will work again. It may not. But then again, it may. Test it, tweak it, perfect it, then roll it out if it meets your expectations.

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