As most readers of this column know by now, I have been an entrepreneur/business owner for just about 40 years.

During that time, I would say that I’ve spent probably a solid 20 years selling (at least). This is because, and frankly, life is a sales job. You start selling the minute you wake up in the morning; you don’t stop until Mr. Sandman has visited.

Think about it. You sell your kids on cleaning up their rooms. You sell your wife on the fact that you have to work late that night. You sell your dog on a quick trip to the browned-out spot in your side yard. (Especially when it is raining or sleeting!)

When you say “selling” to most business people, however, they tend to think more of the classic “sales call.” And so, for the balance of this column, I will, too.

Most sales people do what I call, “show up and throw up.” That is, they get their nose into an account --- hopefully, an account where the “Economic Buyer” is present --- and then proceed to “dump” the contents of their brains onto his/her desk.

“Our (substitute the word “product/service” here) slices, dices, and breaks through ices,” the typical salesman coos, “We have many different product configurations; ranging in price from $10,000 to $100,000 dollars.”

We’ve all heard it.

Would you like to instead improve your chances of success in this situation? I thought so.

So, let me right now give you some simple, and yet oft-“overlooked” techniques for use in one-on-one selling scenarios. I think you’ll like them and they will improve your odds.

All of these techniques fall under the general heading of, “Preparation.” Here we go:

• Prepare by using the internet - I’m old enough to remember when “preparation” meant stopping by the local library --- and then going directly to its reference desk. I’m guessing that today’s young people don’t even know that libraries have reference desks. (By the way, do they?) Today, you need only to log into Google. Once there, you can easily find out just about anything and everything you’ll need.


• “Visit with” the CEO of the company you’ll be visiting – Today, salespeople can not only read the words of the founder/CEO of their targeted company (by Google-ing appropriate articles), but they can even listen to specific speeches and interviews conducted by those people. (For example, and on our radio show, The American Entrepreneur, one can right now listen to a specific interview with any one of some 1,600 CEO’s.)


• Find out who your prospect sells to – It’s one thing to learn a lot about the company you are about to visit; but the real “magic” is in understanding the needs and wants of the customers of that company. What an advantage it is to the salesperson to actually understand their prospects’ prospects!


• Find out the mode that your prospect is in – I guess I could also have said mood, as you can, and just by looking at such sites as EDGAR, quickly determine the environment of the targeted prospect’s business. For example, are they in growth mode? Or, are they in financial difficulty? This can make a huge difference in their attitude towards buying your products or services.


• Determine what their buying history is, vis-à-vis your type of product or service.


• Learn their overall business philosophy – You must find out what is important to them. Again, you can get this by reading the “President’s Message” section of the annual report. This is where their CEO flat-out tells you whether or not his company is “green,” or “brown,” or even “black”! This is also where you can find out how they feel about such things as unions, R & D, and even mothers.


• You can learn your prospect’s strategies – for example, are they a high-priced/high-quality vendor? Or, do they sell inexpensive, low-margin “trinkets” through inexpensive retailers like Walmart? You can also learn how they feel about selling on the internet versus through physical stores. All of this is important.


• Find out exactly who you are meeting with - once again, the internet gives up its treasures. You can trace people all the way back to kindergarten. Using tools such as LinkedIn, an ambitious searcher can quickly determine how many “degrees of separation” there are between him and his prospect. This is an excellent “card” to have in one’s back pocket for usage whenever the conversation begins to lag.

This beats the hell out of flying halfway across the country and walking into an absolutely “cold” environment, does it not?

And yet, so many salespeople still fail to prepare. I’ll never understand this (well, except to say that my observation through 40 years has been that people generally do not want to do any more work than is absolutely necessary).

But, should you do these things; hell, should you do even half of them, you will have a tremendous advantage on your competition.

And after all, isn’t that the very name of this game?