For Anyone Tired Of The Recession And Having To Do Pushy Sales

Whether you work for someone or yourself, I bet there are very few people who aren't worried about their job or their place of work.

Many people love selling. Far more don't. But even if you're involved in sales, you can sometimes hit a brick wall.

And I have just the answer.

But I'll tell you first how I stumbled across a really effective way of generating sales, without selling.

About 10 years ago, I was marketing a training course on PowerPoint for accoutants.

We'd sent a flyer, and only got 3 bookings. The capacity of the course was 10, so I got on the phone to see if I could speak to a few more people and try and get up to break-even point.

So I called and asked to speak to the decision-makers on my list. After a couple of hours of failing to get through to anyone, I gave up.

So much so, I decided to cancel the course.

But I wanted to know why people didn't book. So I started calling, and this time asking for an opinion from whoever answered the phone.

I basically said that we were about to cancel the course, but I wanted to know what we had got wrong. Instead of getting the answer I was after, reception started putting me through to the decision-maker because they didn't feel as though they could answer the questions.

And during those calls with the decision-makers, when I explained what it was and asked where we had got it wrong, instead of negative feedback, I started to get bookings.

The course reached capacity. And we ran it.

The morale of the story? Consider asking people for their opinion on what you do. But genuinely so. Consider doing a little market research.

Not only will you get some vital feedback which can help you improve what you do, you may find people asking questions such as "how much?", "how exactly does your product work?" etc.

Since then, I've often switched to research instead of selling. And in many cases, the research campaigns generate more business than a fully-fledged marketing campaign.

Try it.