April 12, 2004 -- The three most inane, insipid and incorrect assumptions that a printing sales person can make are as follows: No one wants to hear from me on a Monday; No one wants to hear from me on a Friday; and Business is always slow in the summer. The first two are just plain stupid and if you or your sales people believe them you have blown 40% of the workweek. Think of that the next time the “I don't have enough time to sell” sales excuse is uttered. The third assumption is used more often than steroids in a clubhouse, a dictionary in the Oval Office, and a hairdryer in the Farquharson household. Printers believe it. Printing sales people buy into it. The numbers back it up. It must be true, right? Here is another example of one of my favorite beliefs: Every failure a sales person experiences has its roots in a failure to prepare . Right now as you read this, the birds are returning, the sun is rising a little higher in the sky, and your summer sales are being determined. Will you experience yet another self-fulfilling prophecy and see lousy numbers in the summer or will business be strong? What can you do to affect your summer sales? Here are a few ideas: Commit yourself and your sales people to a prospecting program —Make a certain number of new business calls each week for the next 90 days. You will see the results in increased sales activity and therefore sales volume. Call on your current clients —ask them what they are doing to grow their business and what you can do to help. Bring them in for a plant tour. Make sure they know about your complete product line. Call on your “dead” clients— Pull out your files and call any customer with whom you have not had contact in 12 months or more. You never know. Revisit lost bids— Lose a bid recently? Give the client a call and ask how things went and get an estimation of how long their supply will last. See if you can't get in NOW to reexamine old assumptions and make some new suggestions for improving the process and reducing the usage cost of the document. Work harder now— Wouldn't you like to enjoy the summer a little more than you did last year? NOW is the time to put in the extra hours and crank out some extra sales calls. You are—right now—determining the sales volume you will write in the summer, just as the work you write now has its roots in the selling efforts of November 2003 to January 2004. How sweet it will be to be on quota, entering new orders, and have someone slip into your cubicle at noon on a Friday and say, “Bill, can you get in a quick 18?” and then hear yourself say, “Yes, I can!”