I’ve done my own unofficial and totally unscientific survey and have become “firmly convinced” that if you are selling you are failing. This is a recurring theme and with the downturn in confidence in the economy, it seems as though this will not go away any time soon. Yet, people keep “pushing information” on customers (that means advertising, selling, trying to convince). They are frantically trying to do more of what they used to do, back in the long gone, never to return economy. That dog don’t hunt!

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I was speaking with a client yesterday and of course things turned to business. He offered that things were actually starting to “loosen up” for him and that his customers were actually starting to invest again. How that investment is going was of interest. His customers aren’t hiring full time employees. They are investing in productivity and cost reduction projects.

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Companies are gathering as much data as they can on the individual consumer. Companies that have that information are selling it or making it available often times in ways contrary to their promises. The consumer is figuring out how to fight back. Where is advertising going?

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My friends at Impact Hiring Solutions posted an article on their blog answering a question I hear a lot: “Why is it so hard to find great salespeople?” They are right it is hard, and I think we should listen to their solid understanding of how to properly hire a sales person. However, there is a trap waiting for you. It’s a pretty significant trap; and it’s this . . . .

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I’ve been looking at what’s going on with internet commerce these days and how folks are dealing with the explosion of websites, blogs and users. I’ve come to realize that for many practical reasons the cost of SEO (search engine optimization) has put it out of reach for many small businesses. It’s an overstatement to say that SEO is dead, but it is definitely dead as far as most small businesses are concerned. The good news is, we don’t need to do more than the basics SEO work to thrive because internet marketing has changed.

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I came across a recent article from a person who is a sales trainer (no names to avoid embarrassments and conflicts) and who seemed to have suddenly awoken to discover that consumers and businesses are no longer buying the way they used to buy. “Gosh,” I thought, “where the heck have you been?” On the other hand, the comments made the point that I and others have been making for over a year now – maybe close to two years, namely that things have changed and they aren’t coming back.

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For lots of reasons, I love my work. One of the reasons is that I get to address a wide variety of challenges in a wide variety of companies and industries. Yet, while the details and personalities are different, many of the issues boil down to being pretty much the same. This week, I was revisiting the issue of an executive totally frustrated with business forecasting. He was “losing sleep” over the feeling of helplessness at missing a forecast through no fault of his organization. It was causing major stress in his life.

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I’ve frequently heard it said that a major reason that small businesses aren’t hiring and growing is because of all the uncertainty out there. Uncertainties like healthcare costs, healthcare legislation, funding opportunities, taxes and state budgets along with new regulations. By golly, with all that stuff not settled, what’s a poor business owner to do?

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Readers of this blog know that I have postulated that the model for high end sales has changed; accelerated away from the traditional models to a trust based model. This also applies to networking; no selling, only building a trusting relationship. A colleague questioned me recently as to why I thought this was the case. Is it really simply the economy that’s driving this change? My response that was “no, it’s more than just the economy, although the economy is certainly accelerating the change.” So what are the drivers?

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I’ve mentioned in several posts that the world of sales (for non-commodity products) has changed. The consumption minded market is not going to return any time soon. We need to build trust, and so the title for this post. Demonstrate that you are willing to work to generate new money or save me money before you gain from our relationship. Otherwise, it smells like “BS” and I’m not buying.

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