If you’re envisioning the worst for yourself and your business, and your conversations are focused predominantly on bad news, then you’re seriously impeding your own success, asserts Francie Dalton, president and founder of Dalton Alliances. Those who prevail in difficult times, she says, are the ones who steadfastly refuse to allow negativity to form a barrier to their success. Buckle down and determine to take three actions every single day to improve revenue through effective sales conversion techniques. Dalton offers these eight suggestions:

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1. Don’t pick up the phone unless it’s to generate business. During business hours, dedicate yourself exclusively to building your business. Any activity that doesn’t secure new business should be delegated, or done during nonbusiness hours.




2. Virtually “stalk” your prospects. Differentiate yourself with detective work about your targeted prospects. What types of organizations do they belong to? Join them. What kinds of publications do they read? Read them. What types of events do they attend? Attend them. Tap your network to learn more.




3. Work backward to move forward. If you’re tracking important ratios, you know how many qualified prospect meetings it takes to generate one customer, and the average sale per customer. With only these two pieces of information, you can control how much you sell each month. Determine your desired sales volume, then conduct two to three times the number of qualified prospect meetings required to achieve it.




4. Invite scrutiny. Whose business acumen do you admire? Who is already successful in your field? Whose clientele does your product or service compliment? Invite these folks to be your “advisory board.” Meet quarterly to gain their advice on your business challenges. A forum like this imposes a level of scrutiny and accountability that both challenges and comforts.




5. Make your pipeline your lifeline. Never stop learning new sales prospecting techniques. Even when you’re flush with business, don’t get cocky. Realize that if you wait to prospect until you need new customers; it will be too late to achieve immediate results.




6. Keep networking. Whether you enjoy it or not, networking is an imperative. Learn how to do it well. If you want to survive the lean times, you have to network regularly and focus on helping others.




7. Don’t defer getting referrals. Even if you’re uncomfortable asking your satisfied customers to provide referrals, do it anyway. Once you’ve delighted them, conduct a brief interview to learn what they valued most about working with you. Using this information, ask if you can draft a brief testimonial for them to edit and print on their letterhead.




8. Publicize or perish. Both credibility and sales increase from publishing articles or books and speaking on your area of expertise. It’s not that hard. Every time you solve a problem for a customer, it can turn into an article or a speech. Multiple articles can make up a book.

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