When you are in charge of a company, whether you own or manage it, you will want your sales people to be well versed in all of the best sales techniques. One of the best methods to achieving this goal is to effectively train your sales people.

Sales are the most important aspect to a successful business. It is vital that your sales staff get the training that will best help them to achieve the sales your company is after. One of the best ways to get the best training for your staff is to hire an outside company to do the training. You should do some research into the company that you hire to do your training and make sure that they teach online sales as part of their training program.

There are many methods that your sales staff will have to learn to be effective sales people. Marketing strategies and online selling are just a couple of them. Learning how sales works through advertising is another technique that your sales staff should learn in their training.

The sales trainer will have to evaluate the needs of the business to determine the methods that will be taught to your staff. Every business operates its sales department using different techniques and strategies.

Advertising will be taught to your sales staff so that they can decide on the best approach to attract and bring in new customers. Your staff will understand how they can use advertising and the correct methods and approaches are used to keep customers and your business growing.

There are many ways to conduct your training sessions to accommodate all of your sales staff. Some of the training can be done in a classroom or seminar fashion to those sales people who are able to attend. They can also have sales training online if they are unable to coordinate times to attend. This is great for those members of your sales staff who are away from the office on sales trips a great deal of the time.

Some businesses choose not to take advantage of sales training. There is a great deal of competition in business today and any advantage that a business can gain will give you rewards in the end. There is also a new way of doing business with the Internet. Your sales staff must understand how this business works if you are to compete.

Many businesses feel that sales training is not cost effective, however when you compare the before and after profit margins you will see the difference that sales training can make.

The business world has gotten smaller and smaller with the involvement of the Internet. You are now competing with businesses from every corner of the world. You will need to catch the attention of your customers and bring them in with your products and sales techniques.

Sales training is a good idea for anyone in your company that has contact with customers. There is a great deal to learn for everyone on how to deal with customers. Customer service and office personnel can learn something from these sales training seminars.

Peter Geisheker is the CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. http://www.geisheker.com
Peter develops and implements strategic marketing programs for sales training as well as management sales training for businesses of all sizes. http://www.npsalestraining.com

Every business and retail unit has something called a point of sale unit, or in short a POS system. This is simply a location whereby the transaction process takes place. These were evolved from the mechanical cash register, which is still used in some smaller shops today. This can take a long time to type the price in remembering how much everything is, therefore, it is better to buy a system whereby everything is already saved in the system.

You can speed things up slightly more with a point of sale system, which will also avoid problems with barcode scanning, credit card authorization and any other transactional process. The way it speeds it up is firstly by using the right good quality barcode scanner. This means finding a barcode scanner that can read the barcode in any direction. Some barcode scanners require you to hold them at a specific angle, this is not usually possible if you are in a hurry and can take a lot of time to have the item read.

Older barcode scanners have just one laser emitting, newer and good quality scanners have multiple lasers emitting at all angles making it much more efficient to use and saving time at the transaction process. These are called omni-directional scanners. Buying these kinds of barcode scanners will reduce the need to recalculate inventory errors and can check the customers items more accurately. These will reduce your transactional time drastically and calculate items within minutes.

For credit card transactions, it is best to replace any older equipment that you may have and purchase something that will read cards quickly without any connection problems. The way to do this is to upgrade everything or install credit card authorisation software onto your point of sale system with a broadband connection. This way the authorisation process will be completed within seconds rather than a few minutes.

Touch screen equipments are good for fast selection of the products and calculating each item quickly. Each item can be recognised from pre-programmed images from an organised list of categories. Using a mouse takes a long time to find the product that you need, the same applies to using a keyboard as well. With a touch screen, you will not need to use anything else to select the products speeding up the point of sale process.

Always opt for the best good quality and long last software for the system, with regular maintenance and checks. This will ensure that there will be no problems of the system failing on you. It is always a good to have a backup plan in place just in case but you will rarely need to resort to this if you purchase good quality hardware and software systems. Some retailers and businesses choose to use systems that are more affordable and lower in quality. When these breakdown customers are left waiting and feeling frustrated they cannot end the transaction sooner.

This is never a good scenario for any retail business; therefore, it is advisable to purchase good quality systems. In order to make sure you have the best point of sale system in place, you must do your research beforehand and read up on the ones that have been almost always failsafe. Always consult with an expert and compare prices, quality and customer testimonials before you choose the software.

Anna Stenning is an expert on point of sale processes and systems, having researched on this for previous retail industries. For more information visit http://www.gpxgroup.com/

The average day of a busy sales representative can be long but rewarding. They typically start of the day attending meeting with their sales managers to discuss their call appointments and any sales appointments that they have for the day. As well, these meetings can include sales quotas, company information, and motivational techniques to keep sales people on top of their game. Business lunches and office visits to returning clients are necessary for sales people to close sales. Paperwork and returning phone calls late in the day are standard. The day lasts eight to ten hours, with some days lasting twelve hours.

With such a full day it would not be hard to imagine that salespeople at all levels would be suffering from bouts of insomnia, simply because they are responsible for bringing revenue to the company.

You may have noticed some of the following problems:

* Slow or impaired reaction times
* Poor memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities
* Social instability
* Absenteeism at work
* Excessive daytime sleepiness
* More frequent medical problems

With all of the chaos that surrounds you on a regular basis, you need sleep more than anyone else, don’t you think? Though your job may not consist of a typical nine to five work day, that does not mean that you should not try to accustom yourself to a standard night of sleep. This will help prevent insomnia from setting in. You have to constantly attend sales meetings and ‘be on’ for clients, so you do not need to look groggy and frazzled from not getting a sound sleep.

All the things you have to deal with each day may have you stressed out quite a bit, but there is no reason to lie awake at night and experience restlessness for hours on end. Since you travel quite frequently, it might be a good idea to bring a few comforts from home so that you are more comfortable during a hectic business trip. Pack a small pillow to put on the hotel bed, or put a few tiny accoutrements that you have on the dresser or nightstand. Or, maybe you have packed along some aromatherapy that contains wonderful scents that help you to calm down.

Even while traveling on business you might want to try these relaxation techniques:

- Yoga or meditation

- Exercise

- Reading while lying in a relaxed position

- Listening to music while lying in a relaxed position

- Having a soothing bath or shower before bed

- Massage, especially of the neck, shoulder, and leg muscles

Whatever you decide to do, you have an important job, and you should try to relax yourself so that your anxiety does not get the best of you when you lie down at the end of a long, hard day. Keeping a diary might be a good idea, as a means to relieve stress. By writing down all that bothers you or keeps you on the go, you can focus better. That way, you are not holding in all of these things that are causing you to have trouble sleeping every day.

So, slow down, take a deep breath, and don’t allow yourself to continually get so caught up in your job that you forget to rest through the night. It is wonderful that you have chosen sales as your career, but if you are not well-rested, you cannot be good to anyone else, and more importantly, to yourself.

Sherry Harris is the author of the successful e-book “Best Practices Guide: 101 Amazingly Simple Ways to Beat Insomnia”. It was created to be The Definitive Guide of insomnia treatments on the Net. Download the FREE PDF e-book. Visit http://www.ScentToSleep.com to find products to wipe out insomnia.

A lot of businesses enter the government contracting arena with the expectation of the “$1000 mousetrap” that is, the idea that government work is a cash cow that can be milked by exorbitant over-pricing. They are often given a rude awakening when they find that profit margins on government contracts are often quite slim, and may have a cap as low as 10%. In a slow economy or a competitive industry, bidding wars drive prices and profit margins to new lows. With this kind of bid environment it becomes more and more important to track your government bid efforts, your successes and your failures, in order to run the tightest ship possible.
Tracking the Government Market

When it comes time to ask, “Is this government bid strategy successful?” an important follow-up question is, “Compared to what?” Success compared to this time last year is all well and good, but it’s one small piece of a much bigger picture. To get a more complete idea of how your business is faring, establish benchmarks for your industry and market. Tracking against these benchmarks, especially over time, is a good way to find areas to improve, as well as to track the health of the contracting landscape as a whole.

Conduct market research on other companies of your size, in your area, and in your industry. Chances are, your company is already aware of who its major competitors are. How successful are they in the market? Compared to your company? Compared to industry standards? Tracking down this kind of data can take a lot of time, and it can be difficult to make the case for taking up an employee’s valuable time. Instead, consider purchasing business intelligence from a government information service. You can track the contracting activity of buyers as well as competing contractors specific to your area and industry. From there, you can use your market research to track overall trends and bid competitively.

Government Bid Success Metrics

Make sure that tracking is in place so that every government bid you submit, whether you win it or not, contributes to your overall government bid strategy. Tracking success factors allows you to trim the fat and work more efficiently. Some success metrics to track include:

* Job cost
* Profit margin by client and type of job
* Ratio of bids submitted to bids won
* Percent of returning clients
* Time spent per bid
* Time spent per job

Once you’ve amassed some data, areas for improvement will start to appear. Do you have clients who send a lot of work your way, but at low profit margins? Do you consistently submit bids to certain agencies or on certain projects that are rejected? Which projects have the highest profit margins? Which take the longest to complete? With this data you can begin to hone your government bid strategy to target the highest-profit projects. Set minimum requirements that a job has to have before it is worth the time and money it would take to pursue or complete it.

Cutting Costs to Reduce Your Government Bid

Being better informed about the government bid landscape can make a huge difference, but it’s still important to be able to enter a competitive bid. Data tracking can also help shine a spotlight on hidden operational costs, costs that can be cut without sacrificing value to the customer. Track worker efficiency, keeping an eye out for times of day or types of projects that seem to cause productivity to dip. Keep equipment well-maintained; maintenance expenses usually end up costing less than the loss of productivity caused by shoddy equipment. Have project managers keep detailed records of every step of the contracting process. You may be surprised at the hidden places where time and money are wasted.

Onvia specializes in helping businesses of all sizes win more government contracts, while focusing on increasing their efficiency and competitive advantage in the marketplace with effective government bid strategy. http://www.onvia.com

Auctions are those events where properties or goods are sold to the highest bidder. Auctions are mostly public events, where bidders make a series of bids and purchase a particular item for a high price. During auctions, bidders decide the price of an item rather than the seller. It depends on bidders to decide the amount they would want to pay for a specific item. During an auction, a bid is a proof of a legal binding. Bidders agree to pay the amount that they have bid. In a high profile auction, bidders may have to pay a deposit in escrow accounts or give a proof that they can pay for those items.

Types of Auctions:

Different types of auctions take place around the world. Below mentioned are some types of auctions:

1. English auction:
This is a basic type of auction. In this type, people can see the item and then start bidding. Bidders slowly raise the value of their bid until everyone gives up. The highest bidder is the winner. An auctioneer manages an auction, keeps records of the on going bid and decides the winner. Sometimes, the seller will quote a minimum amount for an item to the auctioneer, below which the auctioneer cannot sell that item.

2. Dutch auction:
In this type, the auctioneer sets a particular price and then gradually lowers the price. People in public will start bidding and later decide which prices are suitable for the item. A seller may use this type of auction to sell large quantities of same products to the public. For instance, a seller may want to sell a large amount of hay and will thus, decide to sell this hay to people for the same amount, once a reasonable price is decided.

3. Silent auction:
In this type, the bidders in public will present their bids in a sealed format. These sealed bids open at the same time and bidder with the highest bid wins. There could be a modification in this type of auction. The bidders are allotted a specific period to bid. They can roam in a room displaying the items, and write their bids on an associated sheet of paper. The bidders are allowed to see bids of other bidders and can choose a higher price for an item. At the end of the allotted time, bidder with the highest bid is the winner.

Examples of Auctions:

Auctions can be of two types either public or private. Sellers may trade any kind of items in both types of auctions. Some areas where auctions take place are:

1. Antique auction: An antique auction consists of a trade opportunity as well as provides entertainment.

2. Collectable auction: In a collectable auction, the seller may put up collectables like coins, vintage cars, luxury, stamps, real estate, and luxury for sale.

3. Wine auction: In wine auction, bidders can bid for rare wine, which may not be available in retail wine shops.

4. Horse auction: Bidders can bid for young horses of the best breed.

5. Livestock auction: In livestock auction, bidders can buy pigs, sheep, cattle, and other livestock.

The other examples of auctions may not be public. These auctions are for bidders from corporate levels. Some examples of private auctions are:

1. Timber auction
2. Spectrum auction
3. Electricity auction
4. Debit auction
5. Environmental auction
6. Auto auction
7. Electronic market auction
8. Sales of business auction

Bidders in an auction need to examine the items displayed and decide an appropriate price for an item. Thus, auctions help buyers in getting the best deals and in gaining better profits for sellers.

This article was written for http://www.findthisonline.com an online resource guide that offers a variety of articles written on different subjects. Visit us at http://www.auctions.findthisonline.com for more articles on auctions.

If you own or run a large company you will want to have the most effective sales force that you can put together. The best way to achieve a great sales force is to train your salespeople in all of the methods of great sales techniques.

Because of the size and importance of your sales staff you might consider hiring an outside sales training company to conduct the training. When you hire the company you should find out the methods and types of sales training they teach. Find out if they teach online sales.

A good sales trainer will train your staff on the methods of achieving sales through marketing strategies, online selling and advertising.

The techniques and tactics that are used by each business will depend on the needs and special requirements of the individual business. A quality sales training specialist will be able to analyze your business and determine the best techniques that should be taught in your sales seminar or training sessions.

Your sale staff will learn methods to decide on the best advertising methods and this will help you immediately begin to bring in new clients and customers. Your sales staff will begin to understand the correct methods for bringing in and keeping customers to grow your business effectively.

You might find that it is difficult to get all of your sales staff together in one place. A sales training specialist will be able to conduct their training sessions in a variety of ways to suit your businesses needs. You might find that there can be one on one session inside the company for sales people who work in the office and online training seminars for those who are out of the office frequently.

There are some businesses that don’t find the extra cost of training the sales staff necessary. However, in today’s competitive business environment, any advantage you can give your sales staff will pay off in the end. The online world has created an entire new way of conducting sales and your staff must be trained in these methods.

There are literally businesses all over the world competing for the same piece of the pie as you. That is the effect of online business on the commercial market. You must be able to draw in customers and sell them your product in an online environment. Or at the very least you must give them a reason to shop with you instead of online.

You should consider sales training for anyone in your business that has direct contact with your customers. Customer service and in office personnel can learn some great techniques for handling and dealing with customers in the most effective way.

There has been some data collected on the effectiveness of sales training. Some businesses have shown an increase in sales directly after a sales training seminar has been conducted.

If you are in business, you are doing it to make money. If you can increase the amount of sales you generate for your business, you will be bringing your business to another level of success. A new business or a business that needs an increase in their current sales will benefit from the use of a sales training company or individual.

Peter Geisheker is the CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. http://www.geisheker.com Peter develops and implements strategic marketing programs as well as management sales training for businesses of all sizes. http://www.npsalestraining.com

Had another conversation with yet another entrepreneur who told me he does not “cold call,” he only does “warm calls.”

I continue to be baffled by those who cut off possibilities with a semantic twist. “Cold call, warm call,” it’s simply a state of mind. Your mind. Your prospect does not make those distinctions.

Just because you have designated a call to be “warm” doesn’t mean that the person you are calling thinks it’s “warm.” This “warm call/cold call” concept is a smoke screen that covers the real issue. The real issue is controlling your message. The real issue is being able to communicate with a prospect so that they understand and resonate with what you have to say. The real issue is about having the skill necessary to communicate with a prospect under any circumstance.

Prospecting by phone, introductory calling as I prefer, is a communication skill. Like any communication skill it can be learned and it can be improved upon. The idea when introductory calling is to contact a qualified prospect and entice them with your message. You have a brief amount of time on the telephone to catch and engage your prospect. If you are not able to do that, the call ends without achieving your desired result. If you have the proper skills, however, it is possible to have extremely productive conversations with prospects no matter how you choose to categorize them, “warm” or “cold.”

The idea of a “warm call” is that you’ve had some prior contact with your prospect and that you have somehow “warmed up” the call. The prior contact might be with a letter sent before your call, it might be that you have encountered the prospect elsewhere it could also be that you have a referral.

All too frequently callers who use the “I only warm call”

approach do not adequately prepare for their calls. Instead, they rely on the appellation “warm.” If you are one of these callers, stop right here and ask yourself these questions:

How many “warm” prospects have said “no” to me over the years?

Would those calls have been more productive if I had been better prepared and more in control of my message?

Although you may have sent a letter, you have no guarantee that your prospect has read it. Although you may have met previously, your prospect may not recall that. Although you may have a referral that is no guarantee that your prospect will meet with you or have any interest at all in your products or services.

When you are on the phone with a prospect you must deal with them, where they are, at that particular moment in time. If your prospect hasn’t read your letter, doesn’t remember the person who referred you, or is simply having a bad day, that’s out of your control. What is within your control when prospecting is to have honed your skills so that your message is clear and so that you can respond in any situation.

When you have skills, you know how to catch a prospect’s attention, you know how to keep their attention, you know how to respond to questions and objections and you know how to ask for what you want. When you have those skills it’s no longer about a “warm” call or a “cold” call, it’s about communication, conversation and results.

copywrite 2006 Wendy Weiss

Wendy Weiss, ‘The Queen of Cold Calling,’ is a sales trainer, author and sales coach. Her recently released program, The Miracle Appointment-Setting Script, and/or her book, Cold Calling for Women, can be ordered by visiting http://queenofcoldcalling.com. Contact her at wendy@wendyweiss.com.

As said in many other articles on many other places online, marketing yourself through the internet is one of the easiest things and one of the easiest ways to make money online. Sometimes it can take a good amount of time before you actually make a sale, or people buy the record, or you find your niche. But when you do finally make a sale and find what your good at its one of the greatest feelings ever. Men and women in the past have done internet marketing and marketing strategies online and have made millions if not billions of dollars. If it was possible for them, so many years ago, then it is possible for you as well.

There are so many things available to you now, so many products, website options, affiliate programs, tools, e-books, guides, how could you not make it, or better yet how could you not try? Today were going to look at ways to market yourself online. Some of these are small little things, some of them are larger, and take more time and money.

The first thing you need to do before anything else is figure out what your selling. This means you’ve either already got something in the works, or you don’t have anything in mind and want to start selling something online. In my opinion, this is one of the most important parts of selling online. If you don’t have passion for the product or website, or its not interesting to you, chances are you will fail.

So find something you like to do, find something your interested in. Find out everything you can about the product because this will help you market it to the right people. If your interested in selling or having a website that has to do with surf boards, you wouldn’t market to people that live in Alaska, now would you?!?

Second best thing to do would be to have an extra website about this product. Even if its an affiliate program and it comes with its own website manufactured by the people that either own the product or own the affiliate program. Do another website as well. Your own website. This site could come in handy down the road when you start doing other affiliate programs online, or other things to make money online. It can be your “structure” of things to build off of. Do a nice layout, pick a good domain name with a quality extension, something easy to remember.

Theres many sites now a days where you can get a really nice template for free, a domain name for a few bucks, and hosting for a few bucks. This isint rocket science, and you don’t have to be rich to make a website. You have to be smart. The reason I want you to make another website, isint just to use it as a structure but I also want you to use it for content. Theres a phrase we marketers have online and that is “content is king.” And its true. Search engines often “spider” websites looking for information. And not just any information but unique information. It picks up on keywords. Now if you write on a regular basis, and your using keywords, the search engines will more than likely be coming to your site a lot.

Don’t use just pictures. Don’t use just ads. Sit down and write some quality information. This is going to be your “headquarters” it will have all the info and any of the products you want to sell online. Direct everyone to this site!

Next, you are going to want to promote your affiliate program, product, website etc etc. It doesn’t matter what your selling or the steps you taking to sell it, you have to have eyes looking at it. You could have the best product online and if no one knows about it, or you don’t have a significant amount of traffic, you will never make money from it. This isint magic, its common sense. Now if you look on one of your favorite search engines for “ways to market my product” or “search engine marketing strategies” chances are you will find so many websites its going to make your head spin, so I’m going to just write out a few quick ways to market yourself or your site or your product online:

Make sure your website you made (the second one) is optimized correctly.

Submit your website or your program with a small description to search engines, directories, groups, etc. Make sure you pick the right categories!

DO backlinks! This is really important for your PR (page rank). If you expect to ever be seen on the first page or first few pages of Google or any other search engine, backlinks are one of the easiest ways to go about this.

Every forum you belong to, every personal website you have, every social networking site you belong to, every email you send out, promote yourself. It doesn’t have to be a large confusing 4 page description. Around 255 words or less is sufficient. Also be sure to tell your friends and family. As for email sig links and forums sigs, just a few words to catch someones attention with a hyper link.

PPC advertising.

Text ads, banners or links on sites relevant or semi relevant to the product your selling, or at least in the same category.

Press releases, promo kits, online classified sites or online newspapers.

Buy quality, unique, traffic by category.

Pay someone to do a feature article on you, your website, or your product.

There are so many way to become successful online by practicing good marketing that its absolutely impossible for me to list all of them. So lets review. Pick a niche you have passion about, you cant fake passion. Figure out everything you can about that product. Try to pick something interesting and fun but also unique enough to sell.

Do a second website, this will be the beginning of your structure! Promote yourself any place you can, with out doing anything illegal. With most marketing practices you can do it for free if you look around a bit. If you buy ads online, ppc, text ads, banners etc, start out low at first. And lastly always test the waters before you go and invest $100k into an advertising venture. May you live long and prosperous! Good luck in your ventures online.

This author is the proud owner of http://www.searchenginemarketingpro.biz.

You can’t put a price tag on a good reputation. At the risk of sounding like a MasterCard(R) commercial, It’s priceless.

Folks, we’re living in the Recommendation Age. Social networking and community-driven content sites are launching and growing at an incredible rate. With only a few clicks of your mouse, you can get restaurant, movie and book reviews, network with peer groups, broadcast your own radio show, pose questions of political candidates, and submit your own eye-witness news footage to your network of choice. Now, more than ever before, word-of-mouth referrals and endorsements can quickly take on mythical proportions, seemingly overnight.

Employing testimonials as marketing tools is both cost-efficient and smart marketing. Testimonials offer supporting data for feature and benefit details in your sales materials, and, they immediately lend credibility. Not all testimonials are created equally, of course. The good news is that by posing specific questions of your customers, you will likely receive much higher-quality results.

The Solution: Soliciting the Sound Bytes
We’ve all seen traditional-style sales letters with testimonials from satisfied customers offset throughout the page. It’s the web-equivalent of an infomercial. Whether you love them or hate them, there is no disputing the power you can wield when you leverage the praise of your customers.

Pat Me on the Back, Please…
There are a number of ways that you can garner testimonials from your customers. One method is to place a postage-paid return card in all of your outbound shipments. If you choose to use this method, focus on specific metrics that you wish to measure, such as your website’s ease-of-use, friendly and helpful customer support staff, timely shipments, and quality of merchandise. You may want to leave space for the customer to add their own comments, in addition to the items that they have checked off on the card.

For those who prefer not to use direct mail, a number of other options still exist. Sites like freeonlinesurvey.com or surveymokey.com allow you to create web-based versions, which can tabulate results in real time. One obvious benefit of this method is that it affords you the ability to immediately respond to feedback. Particularly for those who are involved in technology or service markets, this method is strongly recommended.

Many shopping cart programs, such as OsCommerce and VP-ASP offer the “Tell-a-Friend” option for all shopping cart items – allowing shoppers to attach a short note about the product they are recommending. Other features offered by similar cart programs allow shoppers to submit testimonials and rate specific products directly.

For a 21st century twist on a more traditional testimonial, check out the services offered by AudioGenerator.com. By providing customers with your client-specific phone number, they can phone in and record a voice testimonial at their leisure. With the addition of a short snippet of code, you can immediately add this third-party hosted file to your website. Not only does this increase the weight of the referral by presenting it in the customer’s own voice; it also adds interactivity to your web page.

Regardless of the method you employ, make it a point to leverage your rave reviews in your marketing materials and website. It’s the next best thing to patting yourself on the back.

Traci Hayner Vanover, The Promo Diva(R), is the publisher of Create the Dream magazine, http://www.createthedream.com, and the president of Market Outside the Box Trade Association, http://www.marketoutsidethebox.com. She also works with private clients as a publicist, copywriter and consultant.

My very first job was working for the department store chain J.C. Penney(R). I worked for them for several years, during the summers, and on my breaks from college. While most of my classmates were flipping burgers or slaving over deep fryers, I was honing my early sales skills, and thoroughly enjoying a shopping mall setting – my own little “retail nirvana.”

Most of my breaks found me working in fairly comfortable surroundings – the shoe department, apparel, or the occasional stint in bedding and bath. While I may have lacked the level of expertise a full-time employee may have had, my basic knowledge of the departments, coupled with a more extensive knowledge of the store policies and procedures was more than adequate to get me through a five-hour shift.

But all that changed when they moved me to sporting goods.

The width and breadth of my sporting goods knowledge wouldn’t fill a thimble. I had been to plenty of sporting events, but those were mainly to scope out good-looking athletes. Were they not dressed in our school colors, I can’t say with certainty that I would have even known the difference between the teams. Let it suffice to say that a die hard fan I was not.

During this time, the stores still carried a fair amount of sporting goods – things outside of clothing (an area in which I had considerably more experience).

Things went rather well for the first week or so, all things considered. I discovered a whole new world…one filled with batting gloves, cleats, and various and sundry equipment. I was starting to feel more confident, and the department lead left me on my own while he took a fifteen minute break.

It is fifteen minutes of my life that I will never forget.

A gentleman came into the department, and after a few moments, he came over to me to ask for assistance. I asked what he was looking for, to which he replied, “an athletic support.” Puzzled, I asked him to repeat it. He did. I still didn’t know what he was talking about. Clearly agitated, he finally said, “I need a jock strap. Do you carry them?”

Suddenly, the light went on. Why didn’t he say that in the first place?

I led him to the rack where they were, and pulled one off of the peg, and presented it to him, clearly pleased with myself. “Here you are, sir.”

After reading the package over, he angrily thrust it back to me. He left me standing there, confused, as he stormed out. I didn’t even have a moment to reply.

Moments later, my department lead returned, and I recounted my story. He asked me to show him the package I had given to the customer. I took him over to the rack, and retrieved the same package from the peg.

First he smiled. Then he began to laugh. The next thing I knew, he had tears rolling down his face. Once he was able to breathe again, he explained the reason for his laughter.

Who knew these things came in different sizes? Obviously not yours truly.

So, ladies and gents – the moral of the story is this – know your product. Know it inside and out. That knowledge gives you confidence. It builds enthusiasm. It helps you overcome objections. It helps you meet the competition effectively.

In short, it is your single most supportive sales tool.

Traci Hayner Vanover, The Promo Diva(R), is the publisher of Create the Dream magazine, http://www.createthedream.com, and the president of Market Outside the Box Trade Association, http://www.marketoutsidethebox.com. She works with private clients as a publicist, copywriter and consultant.