First, let's be clear that we are only getting the appointment to find out if the person has enough pain or desire for gain to want to spend time with you. This list of six creative ways is only meant to stimulate your creativity to be heard above the noise by the person you want to speak with.

1) Shoot for the top. You know the final decision about spending money is going to be made at the top of the organization. Why not start there and let the president of the company introduce you to someone who has responsibility for assessing the fit your solution has for his company's issues?

2) Get their attention with a personalized cartoon using Stu Heinecke's Cartoon Link email program. (www.cartoonlink.com) Not only will your readers look forward to opening your messages, they will probably pass the cartoon with their name in the caption on to several friends and co-workers!

3) Make a contribution to the person's favorite charity in exchange for a specific block of time. You will demonstrate you have done research on the person when you know their favorite charity. You will also have made a gift that has meaning for them and does not come across as a bribe. Present your proposal this way:

I've pledged to give $50 to (charity) for each appointment I have this month. Would you like to help me send one more contribution?

4) Pay for an Appointment.  If you are calling on a professional who bills his or her time by the hour, pay for an appointment. Tell the professional that since you bought the time you expect the same professional courtesy he or she offers any other paying customer: listening with an open mind. Use the time to ask enough questions to discover any problems, issues, hopes, or dreams your company might be able to help them with.

5) Send a gift. Do enough research, either online or by speaking with others in the organization, to discover what gift might get their attention. Be creative. Attach a note saying you'll call next week about the reason for the gift.

6) Ask your current customers to make an introduction. Asking for referrals might get you some names and contact information. Getting introductions will increase the probability of getting the chance to meet the person. If you are not getting enough introductions, ask yourself three questions: Am I making more introductions to my friends, clients, or prospects than I am looking to get? Am I asking for introductions to people in a clearly identified niche from my friends, clients, or prospects? And finally, how am I thanking people who introduce me to people I want to meet?

Getting an invitation into someone's world takes creative actions, sometimes out of the box. It's a puzzle. It's more of a game than a job. Have fun. Go for it!

What is going on between your customers and your company and they have bought your product or service? The conversations that take place after the sale will determine how loyal that customer is to your company. While your product may influence the regard a customer has for your expertise or competence, the quality of the relationship between your company and the customer after the sale will determine whether the customer returns to buy again and how many people the customer will refer to your offering.

On the Pilgrim Talks radio show, I often ask CEOs four questions:

1. What have you done to increase sales?
2. What have you done to reduce costs?
3. What have you done to retain your current customers?
4. What have you done to develop your people? 

The last two questions are the most telling in this marketplace. When the opportunities contract, the competition increases for, not only the fewer opportunities in the marketplace, but for everyone else's customers. In stronge, growing markets, the emphasis can easily be on selling, finding new opportunities, and creating new customers. In declining or static markets, your best customer is your competitor's best prospect. 

Sales people will often react to tight markets like this by using their selling tools on existing customers. The will try to resell a current customer whom they fear will leave them for a competitor. But this is not an effective strategy. The current customer has already been "sold" on the value of the offering. The customer already believes the company can provide solutions to the problems that have been identified. 

What, then, leads to effective strategies for retaining a customer's loyalty and purchases subsequent to the initial purchase? 

1. Make a decision. The decision to have great customer service comes from the highest levels of the company. Improving the quality of relationships between front line employees and customers will require time, resources and money. 
2. Define great customer service. Clearly understand and be able to articulate what you mean by great customer service. Design the metrics you will use to determine when your company has great customer service.
3. Assess the current strengths and weaknesses of your customer facing employees in deepening their relationships with customers in their daily activities. 
4. Create a plan to develop your people so they can become the providers of great customer service for your company. Assist your managers in creating management processes to encourage, monitor, and celebrate great customer service. 
5. Find and employ the resources who will help you most quickly and efficiently develop your people.
6. Monitor progress. Celebrate success. Assess progress.
7. Rinse and repeat. Providing great customer service is an ongoing developmental project. What you do today to help your people improve their relationships with current customers will need to be reinforced on a regular basis if it is to become the culture in your company. 

Retaining your current customers is a critical factor in the success of business today. With fewer opportunities and new customers to replace any who should be lost to competitors and with the the intense pressure from competitors who are longing for your best customers, the need for ongoing programs of support and development of customer facing employees is an essential element in businesses thriving in today's marketplace.

We have yet to make it through to the rebound. Thoughtful people are saying this is as good as the business economy will get for the next two or three years. Many people will be looking for alternative sources of revenue. What I am finding in my travels up and down the 405 is that people have quit selling and have begun to look for opportunities to serve people in ways they may have not thought of before.

This will take much more emotional and spiritual stamina from all of us. When markets are strong we can easily move from a NO to the next because we have confidence that there will be a YES somewhere along the line. Strong markets create predictability. Not everyone will say YES. Many will not. Some will. It requires stamina to keep this belief in the forefront while we move through difficult and unpredictable markets.

I am finding how important longevity is. I have interviewed people CEOs who have never gone through an economic downturn before. Their attitudes and learnings are different from the CEOs who have gone through two or three downturns in their company life. I haven't gotten the idea that getting through the rough patch is any easier, but, for those who have been through this before, there is a greater confidence that this, too, will pass.

We have heard examples on the radio show of what can be done as we look toward to the rebound. Some have decided this is a good time to take a good look at the level of productivity of every employee. They have measured productivity against an employee's goals. This is a way to measure employee drive and their effectiveness. No doubt that competition will be fierce in the rebound. Every company will be hungry. These companies have used the time to find employees with great drive. They are also working to improve effectiveness.

Other companies are using this time to clarify their strategies for the next three years. They are researching the marketplace and using what they find to create company initiatives to prepare for excellence and market dominance when the rebound comes.

Finally, there are companies that are using this time to help their sales people move from the vendor mentality to the trusted advisor mentality. This is showing up in proactive sales calls as well as in responses to inbound calls from current customers or from web-assisted sales programs that direct inquiring customers to particular companies.

This is a time of innovation, change, and dedicated persistence. This is the time for emotional and spiritual commitment. The rebound will come. Will you and your company be ready?

It is clearer every day that the new economy is more digital than ever. As the traditional methods of finding new customers and clients are less and less effective, business owners and sales people turn to the Internet to seek new possibilities. As I speak with business owners, I learn they see many possibilities, lots of programs, and an overwhelming learning curve. Many of them are also confused about how and where to start.

To Your Success in the New Economy!

IRVINE, Calif., Mar. 17, 2010 – The Pilgrim on the 405, Will Crist, announced today that pre-registration is now open to the Federal Construction Profits Business Acceleration and Membership Program that will be kicking off with a 3-day federal construction workshop conducted by a nationally-respected expert designed to help 20 local construction companies get their fair share of government contracts from the $100 billion+ federal construction market.

The workshop will held April 8-10, 2010 at the Sandler Training Center, 2091 Business Center Drive in Irvine, Calif.  It will be followed by a 90-day mentoring program to make certain the twenty companies who are accepted into this program have the opportunity to get multiple construction contracts. The program is sponsored by the Pilgrim on the 405 and several Orange County business firms who see the opportunity to bring significant dollars into the Orange County economy.

According to Mr. Crist, construction companies in Orange County are suffering. There are fewer commercial jobs available and there are more companies bidding on every job. The sector that is growing is the federal government construction market with allocations of over $100 billion. But only 2.25% of construction companies are registered to bid on these projects.

“Orange County construction companies, their employees and families deserve better,” Crist said. “I know that more can be done to get a greater share of these projects for Orange County construction companies. The workshop speaker has personally completed over a thousand federal construction contracts for himself and client companies representing more than $1 billion in revenue. I am absolutely confident that we can help 20 local construction companies become accepted into the program.”

In the first hour of the three-day workshop, attendees will learn several important things: where to find the thousands of construction opportunities that are not available through fbo.gov, the government’s public procurement website, how to find projects with little or no competition, a unique method of getting great references from owners and government agencies and how to use those references to win contract awards.

The workshop moderator is Doug Reitmeyer, CEO of Reitmeyer & Associates, Inc., author of “How to Become a Federal Construction Contractor” and creator of “Seven Keys to Federal Construction Profits” presented at the Construction Expo. Mr. Reitmeyer has negotiated, bid, bought out and project managed more than 1,000 government construction contracts with a total value of more than $1 billion over the past 35 years in both general construction and mechanical projects.

This program is in high demand as only 500 contractors are being accepted nationwide. Registration for Orange County opens on Monday, March 22 at 10 am PST and closes on Wednesday, March 24 at noon or as soon as the seats are sold out. Interested parties may sign up to pre-reserve a place for the three-month program and three-day workshop at http://www.federalconstructioncontracts.com

Each workshop ticket comes with a 100% money back guarantee and a free guest pass, so partners or associates can attend together. There are only 20 tickets available, and by special arrangement through the Pilgrim on the 405, the investment is only $4,997 for those signing up during the first three days; $6,997 afterwards if any seats are available.

Will Crist, the Pilgrim on the 405, is a problem solver for small businesses, a sales force developer, trainer and coach. For eight years he has been associated with Sandler Training, a leader in innovative sales and sales management training. For over 40 years, Sandler has taught its distinctive, non-traditional selling system and highly effective sales training methodology, which has helped salespeople and sales managers take charge of the process. Crist has worked on sales projects with Fox Home Entertainment, Samsonite, Brooks-Rx, Sonnet Technologies, Nelson Engineering, Alphabio, Naviant (an Internet software company) to name a few. He specializes in helping companies identify where they want to be, where they are now, and what is getting in the way. Problems that he has often solved include building sales teams, assisting management in developing accountability, gaining market share and driving sales growth. He has a radio show, Pilgrim Talks with the Pilgrim on the 405 every Wednesday at 5:00 pm on OCTalkRadio.net.

Since we last spoke, there are a number of developments you might find interesting. Business owners are telling me where they want to be in twelve months. They are telling me what is getting in the way. And we are then finding resources to help them get to where they want to be. Here are some of the developments:

At the January 20 Stimulus Funds Workshop, forty business owners met, heard about, and discussed ways to move their business forward in 2010. From the feedback on the follow up survey, the conclusion is that the meeting was a success. Business owners learned:

• how they can get funding from the state for training,
• about SBA programs that are intended to help green and innovative businesses find funds to help them,
• how to access both the $9 Billion the state spends every year and the remaining 2/3s of the $85 Billion in stimulus money the state agencies will contract for this year, and
• how a business that owns real estate can obtain what amounts to an interest free loan that can be spent now.

Stimulus Funds
Wayne Gross, from the Procurement Division of the California Department of General Services, showed business owners how to get their small business certification. It takes about 20 minutes online. The five largest of the 29 state agencies post their contract opportunities in this space. In the six months between July and December there were 52,000 opportunities posted. 25% of the $9 Billion dollars the state spends each year must go to small businesses. Each agency has a designated small business advocate to help business owners put their best foot forward.

Wayne is coming back in March to help more businesses get certified and to spend three hours showing certified small businesses how to maximize their opportunities with the state bidding system. If you are interested in getting certified as a California Small Business or are wanting to coming to the three hour workshop in March, let me know via email so I can gauge the interest. To email me click here.

 SBA Funds
Hilda Kennedy, from AmPac Tri State CDC, shared how the Small Business Administration has eliminated many of the fees and increased limits for small businesses. She also said money was available. Business owners learned the SBA is seeking to promote green businesses and those working with green business to reduce energy consumption by 10%, create renewable energy, and to increase the lending limit for these businesses. To contact Hilda, click here.

Training for Sales People and Managers

Several business owners are talking about using state funds to train their people. The Sandler Training Center has agreed to provide 40 hours of free sales and sales management training over ten weeks to small business who qualify. The state will be paying for the training. Participating companies will pay a small registration fee for each person. There are forty slots in the first training period which begins in the March 16. Registration is underway for this program. To discuss further or to reserve slots for your people, click here.

Online Marketing Program

Because several business owners said they wanted help getting leads from online marketing, I have invited three national experts to help twelve companies.  In the six-week period starting February 24th, teams from organizations will design effective online marketing programs that will attract new customers and lead to conversations. To see more information or to register, click here.

Lots of opportunities  . . .

So what stands in the way? Every business owner today stands at a fork in the road. Taking the wrong fork will lead to non-existence. Taking no fork will lead to paralysis and non-existence. Being proactive, taking the risk that every business owner must take will  lead to new opportunities. This economy abounds in opportunities for those business owners who commit themselves to finding them. Taking steps to listen to the marketplace, improve the skills of sales people and other employees, spend money strategically, and focusing on business is the best guarantee of being in a thriving business twelve months from now.

There will be another Economic Stimulus Workshop for OC Business Owners in March.  Commit to finding the way to thrive. Those who do will have the highest probability of succeeding. What will help you insure your business will be here at the end of 2010?

To Your Success in the New Economy! 

I am seeing two things in the marketplace now: some marketplaces have changed what they want/need so dramatically that businesses who previously supplied them are struggling to find any prospects at all. Other marketplaces are depressed right now because people are not buying. They still need the goods and services, but they are not buying at present.