When asked what they do, most people respond with a canned answer describing their job title. If you work in a large company doing a typical job, this is probably a suitable answer, but if you are an entrepreneur running your own business, this is far from a suitable answer.

People are busy, usually stressed and often wrapped up in their own world so when you tell them that you’re a lawyer, accountant, business consultant or whatever it is that you do, it does not stand out. To them, you are just another face in the crowd. They know that if they need the type of services you offer, they can simply visit a search engine, ask an associate or friend to refer them to someone or even pick up the yellow pages.

If you want to avoid this situation, it’s often as simple as perfecting your answer to the question. Hopefully, you’re more than just a lawyer, accountant, business consultant or whatever it is that you do. For example, one of our clients is an accountant that specializes in developing tax strategies for small businesses so they can maximize their revenue to become larger and more profitable. That’s pretty specific and definitely stands out from all of the other “accountants” in the area. Furthermore, you can bet that any small business owner who’s trying to grow their business will be interested when they hear that.

So take some time to determine what exactly it is that you do, and craft your answer around that. It will be one of the best investments of time you can make in your business.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well, however anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly until you are able to do it well. In this case, I’m talking about sales calls, presentations and networking. If these are activities you’re not comfortable doing, chances are, your skills are not up to par, so you tend to avoid them. As a result, your revenue suffers. The longer you put these activities off, the longer you will not improve at them, and the more entrenched in your habits you’ll become. So get out there, no matter how bad you may be (and you’re probably nowhere near as bad as you think, in fact you may even be pretty good) and start practicing in the real world. You’ll start to see your skills improve and your revenue increase, which is probably one of the reasons you started your own business in the first place.

For many business owners, this week is a relatively slow period each year because a lot of people are taking time off for the holidays. However, those of us that are in business-to-business industries can gain an advantage because the prospects we’re trying to reach are also business owners. Many of whom are using the slow period to catch up on things. This means they’re in the office, most likely not tied up in meetings or on phone calls, and often without a gatekeeper in place, which makes it a great time for your sales calls to these tough-to-reach prospects.

It’s Friday morning and if you’re like many people, you may already thinking about what you’re going to do when you get off work. That’s fair since you’ve probably put in a lot of hard work this week and you deserve to spend some quality time relaxing. When it comes to business owners though, this is quite often the time for us to catch up on all the things we didn’t have the time to get to because our staff and clients need us for various reasons.

What this means to you as a business owner is that you have a far greater chance of getting to those hard to reach prospects after hours on a Friday than at any other time during the week. Do yourself a favor and spend an extra hour or two at the office today going through your contact list and trying to reach the prospects that you haven’t been able to reach yet. Even if you earn the business of only one of them, the time spent will be well worth it, especially if you are able to earn repeat business or referrals from them.

When business is slow, it can be easy to avoid making sales calls, after all, business is slow for your prospects too and many of them may not use much tact when they let you know this. The thing you may not realize is that despite their sometimes inhospitable nature, they really do want to buy something from you if it will help them in a way that’s important to them. All you have to do is reach them and then show them how your product or service can do just that. Here’s the beauty of the situation ? when business is slow you are more likely to be able to reach the decision maker because they may be working earlier or later than usual or their staff may be on vacation or laid off.

With that in mind, here are 8 tips to make the most of your sales calls when business is slow:

1. Start early and finish late.
When business is slow, most business owners will put in extra hours to compensate. This usually means that you can reach them with out having to get by a gate keeper and without distractions from other people.

2. Be motivated on every call.
Your prospects don’t care if you’ve made fifty sales calls before you came to their office. When you show anything less than 100% you’ll appear unexcited about your product or service, and if you’re not excited, they won’t be excited.

3. Maintain confidence.
To convert your prospects into clients, you’ll need to show absolute confidence in your product or service as well as your self. If you appear desperate you’ll give them the upper hand.

4. Be respectful.
This applies to everyone you meet ? not just the business owner. If you treat the receptionist like she’s not important you can bet that the owner will hear about it. Don’t be fake about it though. It’s pretty simple really, just be genuinely respectful of everyone.

5. Be persistent.
Most sales are not made on the first call, and this is especially true when your product or service is a high-dollar item or fairly complex. Be persistent, but not pushy and you’ll create a higher overall close ratio.

6. Develop a yes pattern.
By getting a series of smaller yeses during the sales process, you’re more likely to get a yes when you ask for the sale. For example, you could say to your prospect “Dave, this software let’s you schedule your projects so that they get completed more quickly and you make more money. Is that something that’s important to you?” Of course he’s going to say yes.

7. Get commitment.
By getting commitment from your prospects, you’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll become clients. For example, you could say to your prospect “Sarah, if I can show you how this service will increase your web site traffic resulting in more sales, is this something that you would be ready to make a decision on today?” Now when you get to the close, they really can’t say that they have to think about it because they already said they would make a decision today.

8. Follow up.
As mentioned earlier, you won’t close most of your prospects on the first call. That being said, you need to follow up in a timely and professional manner. You can utilize a software program such as Outlook, or better yet, Act or Goldmine to keep you on top of things. The person that stays in their mind will be the one that gets the sale when they make a decision.

A common clich? you hear in business is, ?there is no better form of advertising then word of mouth.? Networking is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of professional development, an untapped mecca of free leads waiting to happen, and your potential clients are out there waiting to hear about you.

Whose almighty word will potential clients initially trust; close friends, random strangers, or yours?? A conglomeration of all of these is important to any business; however, your presence is always needed to solidify the contact.

Effective networking is a give and take responsibility.? You need to first build the relationship then work on maintaining it by providing leads and utilizing the new leads that come from your new contacts.

Networking is not for business settings only; contacts are made at grocery stores, baseball games, and even standing in line for a much needed beer at the local bar.? More solid business contacts and deals have been made over a shared drink or an afternoon at the golf course than you might think.

When going to functions or even just out, always be prepared.? No, this does not mean whip out the power suit for every outing; just make sure that business cards are readily available if a networking opportunity comes along and a pen is there for important notes you can take on what they will need as a lead as well.

The kind of networker you are will dictate which contacts you will attract.? If you are shy, unconfident and do not seem knowledgeable about your services, others will not view you as a leader in your profession. In order to gain a potential contact you will need to professionally establish yourself as the leader in that business, an appropriately dressed person will be more effective then one who either intimidates, or is seen as a slob.? For example: if you are meeting a potential or a group of contacts in a social setting, you would not want to arrive fully decked out in a suit if you know these are beachside kind of dressers.? You will be seen in a different light that will be less than agreeable.

Networking is a vital part of making a company a concrete part of the business community. Use your skills of conversation, your joy of happy hours, dining, and business events and you will gain that extra edge.

When a clear concise branding is partnered with an equal physical presence you will find clients and potential clients on a consistent basis.

We all should smile more often.

Not only does it make those around us, such as our family, friends, employees, clients and prospects, happier, but it also makes us happier ourselves. Give it a shot, put on a genuine smile today and see if it’s not contagious. Have you ever noticed that some of the most successful people are also some of the happiest people? They aren’t happy because they’re successful; rather, they’re successful because they’re happy. Making a point to smile as often as possible is one of the easiest things you can do ensure your success.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago and he mentioned that he was having some difficulty perfecting his elevator speech. It wasn’t long before I realized why. Like most new entrepreneurs, he was eager to tell the whole story about what his company can do and all of the situations that could be improved with his product. On one hand he was right, because he is enthusiastic about a great product and an innovative business model, but on the other hand, he was wrong, because if his prospects get bored before they get to the good part of his story, the chance of them becoming customers is pretty slim.

So how do you avoid making the same mistake? Simply narrow your business down to one sentence. For example, if someone asks what we do, my first answer is “We specialize in helping companies like yours to compete with the bigger companies and win.” Then once I have their attention, I can get into some of the details on how we do what we do or what we’ve done for similar companies.

It’s easy for your enthusiasm to dilute your message, but if you take the time to develop a simple, focused sentence to explain what you do, you’ll have plenty of time to tell your prospects everything about your business.

We’re often asked by clients to help them generate word of mouth for their product or service. One of the things that we suggest they do is blog on a regular basis. Now, keep in mind, we install, design, and configure the blog for them and then train them to use it. Despite the fact that everything is done for them and they simply have to write about something that they know inside and out on a fairly regular basis, the response we often get is “No, I don’t want to talk about our product, I just want to get other people talking about it.”

If you’re not passionate enough about your product to talk about it, what makes you think anyone else will be? Marketing is not magic. If your staff is not enthusiastic, marketing can not make them appear as though they are. You can’t make someone else excited about something that you yourself are not excited about. Effective word of mouth exposure is created when people become excited about an innovative product or service and tell other people about it. For that to happen, the excitement has to start at the core — you and your staff.

We’ve all gone on a sales call that didn’t result in a sale. Sometimes the reason is apparent, and other times it can be more elusive. More often than not though, the weak point in the sales process is related to qualifying your prospect. This is because once a prospect shows signs of interest, most people immediately start trying to close the sale without ensuring that they truly have all of the information that they need to do so successfully.

The next time you’re out there on your sales calls, take the time to really find out what your prospects decisions are based on. What problems are they attempting to solve with your product or service? What would solving these problems mean for them? What have they tried before and how did it work for them? The idea is to collect the information you’ll need to close the sale while getting them thinking about the effect that not having a suitable solution is having on them, and then benefits they will enjoy when they do achieve a solution. In doing so, your sales process can often seem almost effortless. In fact, your prospects may even feel that they guided it and you were merely a bystander.