If you are in sales, you are involved in corporate dating. You must understand this because it is critical to your success or business. This concept of dating and sales might seem like an odd pairing but it takes place everyday. It has been a long time since I was on the dating scene as a single person but Im involved in business match making activities constantly. Businesses and salespeople are searching for the right company and the perfect contact for a life long profitable relationship. This is the same as dating.

The courtship activities

The initial activities of a successful courtship get you noticed by the individual you want a relationship with. If you are like me, you remember how this worked. Well, the dating game of business is not different when we want to get noticed. Although we might not send flowers, we might use candy, donuts, cookies or special mailings. In high school it was joining a special club just to be in the same room with a person we wanted to know better. In business this strategy might be attending a social event or commerce meeting to meet someone.

More frequent contacts during the courtship period are always expected. Here is a question for you, do you increase and vary your contact activities when you are courting a prospect? Do you send notes, letters, and e-mails besides the standard telephone call in increased numbers during this courtship period? If not, why not? You will never get noticed if you dont apply this courtship strategy with the important prospects you want to know better. It is only after we have a matured relationship that we can reduce the frequency of these contacts.

The investigative work

When you were interested in someone, how did you learn about them? If you are like most of us, you acted like a master detective and learned as much as you could about the individual you were interested in. You probably asked all your friends and their friends about your potential date. Primarily because you wanted to know everything there was to know about them. Things are better today with the Internet, we can learn so much more about our intended when we research correctly.

Finding common interests was your goal with research and this should be the same goal when striving to develop long term relationships with prospects and customers. In business, the difference might be how we search for pain points with our prospects and even our customers. It is the pain points we uncover that will attract our benefits and solutions to prospects. The more pain we discover and make apparent to our contacts the more likely they will desire a solution oriented relationship with us.

Matchmaking and profiling

We cant ignore the Internet which brings a unique set of matchmaking tools to assist the single person or business. If we use Internet tools we have a chance of finding a great match for a great relationship. We can use these ideas and apply them to our search for the perfect business match. Some of the online dating sites use extensive testing and personality profiling to assist in matchmaking. We can do the same thing with Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC) codes and matching our best customer profiles with potential prospects. I hope you enjoyed this journey down memory lane for dating and will apply the sales courtship strategies to your sales strategies.

Steve Martinez

My name is Steve Martinez and I started this business development company to eliminate sales failure. I have spent the last few decades honing my experience as a National Sales Manager, Sales Trainer, Mentor and Author of Selling. This history provides the depth of my experience and value to you as a client in the Business to Business marketplace.

I am proud to say that our innovative sales management strategies are revolutionizing sales for business to business companies. My clients are taught the advantage of building long term profitable relationships using his customized sales action plans. The results are nothing short of magical. Salespeople are able to perform twice, three times and, in some cases, ten times what they used to do before. Sales Managers enjoy the Selling Magic system as they more effectively manage and forecast sales.

I am not new to sales management, technology and sales workflow. I bring 25 years of business management consulting experience. I have been fortunate to have traveled the United States as a National Sales Manager, National Account Executive where I learned the real world lessons of sales. I've also worked for franchise organizations leading sales to a network of over 700 salespeople.

I wish I could say that sales success came easy. It didn't! I had to work at selling and learn the tough lessons. fortunately, this made me stronger and wiser. Through my experience I learned why businesses fail and why salespeople struggle in sales.

I enjoy applying these valuable lessons, focusing on teaching others how to increase sales, become more profitable using technology and following the best practices of Customer Relationship Management.

Our clients tell us, Selling Magic is a logical choice. It provides advanced business development strategies. We are certified members of the Cargill Consulting Group and the Mastermind Consulting Group. Selling Magic delivers sales management and Customer Relationship Building solutions with a suite of consulting services designed to enhance your business.

Steve is an accomplished speaker and writer for business development projects. Sales Automation, Sales Coaching and E-Marketing are his primary projects in business development.

We invite you to discover the Selling Magic approach to sales management and how Selling Magic can help you "out wit, out smart and out last, your competition."