In Part I of “What Top Salespeople Do to be the Best,” I gave you the first two of five things top salespeople consistently do to stay on top. To review, the first two are:

1. Prospecting: Successful salespeople generate activity on a consistent everyday basis.

2. Follow up: Successful salespeople find ways to keep in touch with clients and prospects on a regular basis, because they understand that the key to selling is to be in front of the prospect when he or she is ready to buy.

This week, I’m pleased to give you the last three of the five things top salespeople do to be the best.  

3. Stay on top of the issues in both yours and your clients’ industries:  If you want to establish yourself as an expert, advisor and resource rather than just a salesperson, it is important to be well versed on not only what’s going on in your   industry, but your clients’ too.  

I’m sure many of your clients don’t have the time to stay abreast of all the latest happenings, innovations or changes in either their industry or marketplace. If you could do that for them, that would give you a leg up on your competition, and   make you incredibly valuable and indispensable to your clients.  
 
4. Networking: You need to be networking within three distinct venues:   

·Your own company: To establish relationships with those above and below you and to create a high profile and    reputation for yourself within your own organization.

·Your client companies: the higher up you can create a relationship within a client company, the better chance you have of keeping that client for a long period of time.  Purchasing agents and middle managers change far more often than top VP’s and CEO’s.

·Your industry and local business community: the day of the organization man is dead.  Hardly anyone stays with the same company 30, 40 years anymore.  Over the course of your lifetime, you might have 3 or 4 different careers.  For this reason, it’s important to maintain a high profile in your local business community and a national profile in your industry, which can be accomplished by getting heavily involved in your industry’s national association.

5. Life Long Education:  Because of globalization the business world is more competitive than it’s ever been. Economies in China, India, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia are exploding like never before, creating the kind of competition for jobs that we’ve never had to deal with. If you are not always looking to learn in order to be better at who you are and what you do, your job could end up 10,000 miles away.  

Embrace the latest technologies. Learn new skills. Make yourself more valuable than you’ve ever been. Don’t tell me you’re too old to learn new technologies or skills.  I’m 54 and learning new things everyday (Podcasting, blogging, RSS feeds, etc.) that I’m using to transform my business to be better able to compete in the 21st century. If I can do it, so can you.  

What’s even better is; you don’t have to go back to school to learn it. There are so many resources available to us today, there’s no excuse for not doing it.