mvessel's blog

While the opportunities that industry events offer can be priceless, the costs of attendance can quickly add up, particularly if your team is presenting or hosting a booth. In these tough economic times, many smaller IT firms are taking a long, hard look at their trade show budgets and wondering if attendance is really worth the hefty price tag.

Although the top sales gurus still recognize that some people are just more naturally inclined towards sales than others are, the prevailing belief today is that sales success is much more the result of skill than of chance. In other words, with enough diligence and effort, you can learn to be a more effective sales professional just as readily as you could teach yourself to speak a foreign language or master a new software program.

Many of us are accustomed to making resolutions for self-improvement at this time of year, but the transition to a new year is also a great time for mapping out and implementing business changes. With January 1, 2009 looming dead ahead, now’s a great time to set aside a few hours—or even a few days—for taking stock of your team and making plans for the weeks and months ahead.

You’ve made your way past the gatekeepers, scheduled the meeting, completed your background research, and unleashed your most persuasive sales pitch. At the time, your potential client seemed interested and enthusiastic, but now, a few weeks down the line, you’re having a hard time touching base with them. In fact, you’re beginning to suspect that they’re giving you the run-around.

When it comes to ensuring your firm’s success, effective marketing is a must, whether in the VAR space or any other business sector. But contrary to what some small business owners some to believe, not every marketing effort is equally effective. In fact, there exists a broad continuum of possible outcomes, and depending on the strategy that your firm chooses to implement, your next marketing campaign could fall at any point along that spectrum, from ‘no discernible impact whatsoever’ to ‘runaway success.’

If you’re like most in the IT sales space, you’ve probably read enough about sales to write your own how-to book. But while most of the sales literature out there focuses on what you should do to increase your chances of success, there’s perhaps too little emphasis on the kind of classic blunders that are virtually guaranteed to sink even the surest of sure things.