Create your own opportunities

Just one idea can positively transform your life, career, income and wealth. As I have written before, in uncertain times we can let the negativity of current events and others consume us, or we can continue to look for opportunity. Excessive worry, however, can often cause us to lose sight of our goals and can limit our creativity and problem solving capabilities just when we really need them.

These tough times call for us to be even more innovative, inventive, creative and persistent. Some of the most successful sales people are the most adaptive and creative people you can meet, especially when it comes to finding new markets and new ways to solve customers’ problems with their products and services.

As the saying goes: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” And in these tougher times it is not only necessary to keep our sales activities going and ensure that we have enough people to speak to who can work with us, but to think creatively about how we’re going to do that.

Does your thinking or sales approach need a refresher?

If you are feeling in a bit of sales slump, here are some questions to consider that may help you keep your ideas fresh, check for any blind spots and help you create opportunities so you can keep your prospecting and sales efforts on track:

• What are the current boundaries or rules in your business, team or area of expertise?
• What are the rules that can increase the likelihood of success in your business, your team’s field of expertise? Rules can be formal (written down) or informal (spoken or implied). How do these rules help you solve problems?
• List three times when you didn’t listen to an opportunity and it hurt you, your team/business. What can you learn from this?
• What were the rules you followed that kept you from seeing or taking advantage of those opportunities?
• What changes can you make to your thinking to increase your imagination and flexibility and create more sales opportunities?
• What is impossible to do right now, but if it could be done, would fundamentally change you, your team and your business for the better?

Often times our customers can have the answers to these question also. So if anything, get out there and ask them for feedback about how you can all work together more effectively and creatively get through these challenging times in good shape.

For more Sell Like a Woman blogs, click here.