SuccessCo.com

  Everyone suffers from fatigue on occasion. Membership presentations can suffer from the same problem: repeated too often - word for word, thought for thought - their edge can dull. Moreover, circumstances and the business environment are not the same as they were just 12 months ago, providing even more cause for you to continually update and improve your membership presentation to reflect these changes. When was the last time you reviewed your presentation's key points and assessed their effectiveness? What about your opening 30 seconds, which is so crucial to a presentation's success? By reviewing these elements on a regular basis, you can rejuvenate a tired presentation and breathe new life into your sales. -Jim SuccessCo.com

  As an avid mountain biker, I have learned the importance of focusing on where you want the bike to go, rather than on where you don't want to end up. This lesson has never hit home so well as it did when I approached a tiny gap between two rocks and, instead of focusing on where I wanted to go - the space between them - I concentrated on what I didn't want to hit - the rocks. Of course, I ended up crashing and burning. The same lesson can be applied to a successful sales professional. It is important to begin each day focusing on exactly where you want to be by the end of the day, week or month, and not on the obstacles that may prevent you from getting there. This positive approach is a common technique possessed by top development professionals, and using it regularly will help you achieve your goals. Jim SuccessCo.com

  Obviously, most sales professionals would rather talk to a friendly prospect than a tough or obnoxious one, but the payoff can be big for those confident enough to pursue the latter. By not taking a prospect's gruff style personally and by maintaining a consultative approach, even the toughest prospects can open up once you break through their initial, oftentimes superficial defenses. Another way of looking at this is that the competition for their business is so much less, because the average salesperson doesn't have the skill or fortitude to stand toe-to-toe with them.