Career Sales Training: Where Are All The Opportunities?

You pass up more opportunities each day than you could ever handle. Anyone who wants to be a top producer knows there are two aspects to sales success you need to succeed. First, you have to recognize opportunities others overlook. Second, you need to understand the opportunity well enough that you can communicate how you can solve that problem better than anyone else. All this comes before you even get the chance to “sell” anyone anything.

Stop knocking on the same doors and using the same lists everyone else is using. Look where your competition doesn’t bother to look. This may require a change in mind-set, but it is well worth the effort. Have you ever noticed that when you’re even thinking about buying a certain make and model of car that all of a sudden you see lots of those cars on the road. There aren’t more of these cars just because you’re thinking about them, but because you’re thinking about them you’re more alert and aware of those cars. So, if you were to start thinking about who else you could work with over and beyond the same old crowd you’ll start to recognize opportunities that have always been there right under your nose just waiting for an astute sales professional like yourself to snatch them up.

Start listening for opportunities in everything you hear. Listen for things others will never hear because they’re so caught up in themselves and their own thoughts. Listen intently to the radio, TV, other people and begin to challenge yourself to find an opportunity in what you hear. That opportunity may be a direct opportunity or it may provide the connection to a direct opportunity.

You have to really understand what you offer and the needs of others to take the most advantage of the opportunities around you. That means you need to do better job of doing your research than your competitors. You’re watching and listening for big opportunities that others will never find unless you point them out. Because they haven’t taken the time to research other markets to find out what problems they have or what they need. Once you know that you have to position your solution to their problem or want in a way that completely satisfies that need. If you can do this better than anyone else you’ve just obtained a corner on the market with a specific segment of the world.

Any list that you can buy or that a company provides you isn’t worth much. Your just one more person in a stream of people contacting the same people trying to sell them the same thing. Create your own priceless list of buyers by capitalizing on the opportunities others don’t even realize exist, and guard that list with your life.