By: Steve Norris

If you are in outside sales in what is known as a hunter position, you are either a water bucket carrying salesperson, or you are a pipeline building salesperson. Find out why you need to identify which one you are, and which one you want to be!

Robert Kyosaki tells a great story about a village that had a serious water issue. They did not receive enough rainfall to provide water for the villages daily needs, and the river was a couple of miles away and highly inconvenient for the village people to go to every day. The mayor decided once and for all to put an end to the problem. He would put the job of bringing water from the river to the village up for bid, and they would outsource the project to the winning bidder.

Well, as luck would have it, two men put in their bid, and they were both awarded the project. The mayor figured a little competition never hurt anyone, and they would also always be sure that they would have enough water. Immediately, man number one went out, bought two water buckets, and started carrying buckets of fresh water early in the morning back and forth from the river to the village 6 days a week. He took Sundays off, so on that day the village did not have water.

Man number two did not buy buckets or start carrying water at all. In fact, no one was sure what he was up to. This made man number one quite happy, as he was earning all of the money as the sole source of water for the village. It was terrific! Man number one continued to carry buckets day after day, all day long under the hot summer sun, and he made a darn decent living doing so.

Meanwhile, man number two had gone to work gathering investors, developing a business plan, and received permits to build a stainless steel pipeline from the river to the village. Once complete, he was able to offer an endless supply of water to the village 7 days a week that was cleaner than what man number one was able to provide for 10% of man number ones price! Competition had arrived with a fury!

The example was told to Kyosaki by his rich dad to illustrate a point on work and investing, but doesn’t it also apply to you in the world of competitive sales? In the past 10 years, anyone in sales can tell you the games rules have changed, and they have changed with a fury!

If you are mindlessly cold calling day after day, with no long range plan on how to put your prospecting on auto-pilot, how are you any different than the guy carrying two buckets back and forth every day from the river? How can you continue to compete with a stainless steel pipeline with your two buckets as you get older and your back starts to ache from the unending physical toil? As the odds of you succeeding against those with a long range plan become slimmer and slimmer, how do you get out of bucket carrying mode and make your own pipeline before it’s too late? How can you possibly avoid burnout? How will you continue to compete in the new digital age with ancient methods of water transfer?

You can’t. And, you won’t. If you do continue on the road of carrying buckets day after day, the inevitable end will be sales burnout, ending up broke, bitter, and completely confused as to what happened. Even as you work right now, some of your competition is in the process of building stainless steel pipelines of new clients. And some of those customers used to be yours. How do they do it? What are they doing? How did they know? But perhaps most importantly, how can you do it?

The answer to the last question is different for every field and every industry, but yet the answer is the same in concept. It’s the power of leverage. How does the pipeline carry more water than the individual? It is a structure that took a lot of time and effort to build, that works 24 hours a day even when you dont, required a vision for the future, and it fulfilled a need. You need to repeat that exact same process in order to create your own pipeline. If you are not in an industry where that is possible, you may consider finding one where it is. Carrying buckets long term will almost guarantee sales burnout.

When you take a look at your industry, there is already someone who is building a better mousetrap and is in process of building their own stainless steel pipeline for finding qualified customers. It is never too late to catch up. But do not be fooled, there is no shortcut in the process. There are hours of hard work involved, tremendous amounts of planning to fulfill a market need, and a long range view of where you want to be. When you decide to become a pipeline builder instead of a bucket carrier, your mind will explode with creative ways to make it so, but it will still require a ton of hard work to get there. The sooner you can identify where you are in the process, the sooner you can begin to work towards where you want to be. Eventually, you should be able to put your prospecting on auto-pilot. Best wishes in your pipeline building!

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Steve Norris is a Texas based Energy Efficient Electrical Contractor and Telecommunications Broker for over 80 carriers nationwide. He specializes in hardware solution for multi-location business with advanced infrastructure needs. Over 90% of his clients are able to implement a new technology infrastructure with Dallas VOIP solutions without increasing their budget with TeleTAP.

No one never realized it before, but you can use your custom greeting cards as a business relationship tool. With jobs going down the drain, and the recession looming, it is getting more and more important to maintain and improve your business relationships through greeting card printing. Your business network can become your safety net and “opportunity generator” as you try to find your next most profitable job or business deal. If you want to know how to use custom greeting cards as a social networking tool, then just follow the tips outlined below.

Give them to officemates – If you already have a few custom greeting cards ready to give, then one of your first targets to improving your business network is your current work-mates or officemates. On special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries and other important events, do not forget to give them your custom greeting cards as a mark of friendship. If they get promoted, you can also give them your greeting card as a sign of admiration. By keeping this level of friendship and goodwill with your officemates, you will gain a nice base group of friends that can help you in good times, and more importantly on the bad times as well.    If someone unfortunately gets laid off, or a lot of you get laid off, then your circle of officemates can be your support group during the bad times. They can give you any job opportunities that they may spot, and you can help them with the same. By asking your office friends, and their friends of friends, you can use your office social network to find good opportunities for your career. All of this can be assured because you gave some good will and a custom greeting card when it counted.    Greet the boss – The boss and other higher ups, should also be your target for? social networking. With staff cut backs around the corner, a good impression with your bosses can improve your chances of avoiding the chopping block.

Again by maintaining a good relationship with your superiors while printing and sending them a custom greeting card or two once in a while, can help improve your reputation with them. You will not be considered as just another employment statistic, they will consider you as the person you are (which is hopefully well worth preserving in the company). So don’t forget to greet your boss when it counts with a custom greeting card.    Making friends with colleagues – Your business colleagues are also a good target for improving social relations as well. Your network of business contacts are of course your source of business opportunities and deals. If you send them custom greeting cards on their birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events, you will not appear to them as the run of the mill business contact. You will be considered as a friend that values your relationship not just in business but in real life as well.

As the economic downturn trickles down and hits our lives, it is those real friendships that you can count on in business. If you take care of your business relationships, then you will still have a group of business friends that you can rely on for business opportunities.    There are still many ways on improving your relationships through the use of custom greeting cards. But, as you can see, when you improve your relationships with your business contacts, officemates and bosses, you can form a nice network of friends that can support each other in these bad times. When you work together as a group, you can all share the benefits of good business through good relations.  For comments and inquiries about the article visit  Custom Greeting Cards  and  Greeting Card Printing
Author: Charen Smith
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/improving-business-relations-through-custom-greeting-cards-872332.html

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform and it’s a little different from any other online or social media tool. When people first begin using it, it can seem overwhelming and confusing. How can you really type anything of substance in 140 characters or less?

The first thing I usually advise is that you take some time getting familiar with how it all works. Put up a picture of yourself, find some others to follow, and “tweet” some updates. It may seem a little like you are talking to yourself to do this especially if you are not being followed by anyone else. But it helps to see activity when someone comes upon your page and is making a decision whether to follow you or not.

Once you have observed and participated a little, there are a few things you can do to help you build relationships. Why is that so important? It all goes back to establishing that know, like and trust factor. People like to do business with those they know, like and trust, right? Here are some of the ways to use Twitter to create rapport and get more visibility for your business:

1) Give value. Share links, offer advice and answer questions. I usually suggest a balance of 85% non-promotional tweets to 15% promotional tweets. When you are sharing interesting tidbits, they do not (and should not) be all about your services and offerings. On Twitter, people are looking to learn more about you the person, not just you the business owner. Of course, once they feel that they know you better, they are more willing to eventually buy from you!

2) Engage others. Ask questions, use the @ function to spark conversations and re-tweet others’ messages. This helps people get to know you, but it is also a chance for you to demonstrate your expertise. You don’t need to outright sell in order for others to see that you have something of value to offer them. Before you know it, others will be re-tweeting (sharing) your helpful information with others, leading to more visibility for you.

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Are your loyal customers spread word of mouth marketing?

Your faithful customers will not always be your greatest referral builders. There is no relationship between buying behaviour, frequent spending or customer loyalty and word of mouth. Porsche customers are not referred to the brand by other customers relatively; Porsche gets its referrals from children that love cars. Gaze beyond who is buying and who isn’t to find your greatest referral builders for your niche business.

What referral methods are you applying in your niche market?

1.     Are you looking for recommending behaviour? Capture a gaze at the prospects using your tell-a-friend forms or frequently talking about your personal brand.

2.     Are you looking for readers? Your blog and newsletter subscribers are often your prospects looking for an interactive sharing of creative ideas.

3.     Are you looking for prospects who crave your products or services? Everyone wants to wear or employ your logo is a superstar who wants to show your personal branding to the world.

Watch the video below to be inspired and be prepared to have your personal customer attitudes changed. Your prospects and customers will be drawn to you like a magnet by what you put into practice and learn from Johnny the Baggers’ prompting. An unforgettable story about a young man who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect.

Inspirational movie about customer loyalty based on a true story!

Today more people are choosing to work from home and spend time with their family. Parents no longer want to work endless hours and have someone else raise their children. In most cases it is the mother and wife that chooses to stay home but for some people this is not a possibility and a double income is needed in the home. There are now options for many people wishing to stay home. There are a number of at home call center jobs available to people wishing to stay at home and work and make a great income.

However if you are not familiar with the call center business you might not know what types of call center jobs there are out there. When working from the stay at home sector of the call center industry you can expect to make and receive calls. In most cases, these types of call centers receive incoming calls from clients and therefore provide customer support. You may also be working for out bound call centers in which you would place calls in an attempt to establish communication between the call center and the client or customer.

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What is the little-known secret that top web site owners know which gives them an unfair advantage over their competition?

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I have a question…

When was the last time you asked your customers what they wanted from you?

It may seem simple, but you`d be amazed how many businesses are not doing this. And if you consider the ones who ARE doing it, the majority are doing it poorly.

They use email. They use their blog. And many will pay too much for hosted services that charge them on a monthly basis.

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