Because these stories are everywhere, heads of sales and marketing departments are hearing from their CEO: “What do WE need to do to get some of this ‘easy business’ from on-line?”

There is no easy way to making a sale, for most businesses, it takes hard work and smart effort no matter what the medium. We all want this to not be the case. We want to find that magic formula, that one thing that we do not do now, that if we could just do, sales would skyrocket.

But, you say, in my business…if we just had a more user-friendly website, sales would improve. Maybe.
Or, if we could do podcasts, more people would hear about us, and sales would improve. Yeah. Or, if we could just email every prospect with relevant, insightful messages about our products with our reasoned approach, a significant percentage would buy. And, we could just sit back and cash the checks, right?

We heard this in days gone past, pre internet.

It might have started with company literature. “If only we had a sales piece that showed this, my sales would improve.” This is still a favorite of many sales people….the idea of sales literature actually selling or even advancing the sales ball a little…is as old as lazy people who want shortcuts, rather than hard work. Sales literature will actually SLOW the sale down in most cases.

It is the same today.

But you know this, down deep. You are just afraid that this new atmosphere is somehow different, that THIS time, there will be an easy route to financial or sales heaven. I’m thinking there isn’t, so take comfort in the fact that if you continue to do the basic things well, and often, with ever increasing, incrementally improving efficiency and effectiveness that you will win the sales battles.

I am reminded of the old time sales plan of “mail 10, call 10.” The idea was that everyday, the sales rep would mail ten prospects a note or piece of literature, and then follow up with a phone call. Every day, every single day.

What happened?

Most of the time…because every sales person is above average…the sales person would think, “that plan will work for old Joe, but I am going to do it this way….” So they would stop with the disciplined approach. They would search for the shiny penny, for the easy path.

A few people would continue to work the plan. If they were smart, and if their company was also smart, easy mailing piece got better and each sales call got better too. These happens when you realize that small and incremental improvements are more important that some kind of panacea.

By no means am I suggesting that you completely avoid the new twitter-type, mobile-texting platform arena for your business.

Just don’t bet the ranch on it.