Why were my sales so poor at the beginning of my sales career? Here are only three of the many reasons:

1. I was trying to make sales call during the day when maybe one decision-maker might be home. This is also known as trying to make a “One-legged sale.”

2. When I got too many people saying no, I went faster and spent less time with each customer.

3. I was too busy flipping back and forth between running jobs and selling jobs, and no one was in synch.

What changed me into a top seller at my company? Good sales training to the rescue! I attended many sales workshops and I practiced a lot. All this training and practice taught me:

1. How to get my customer to value my time and still accommodate their schedules. It also taught me how to maximize my own workday.

2. Another secret they taught me was to keep my days free to run the existing jobs I had sold so I could keep the fires to a minimum. The only exception for sales call during the day was to address an emergency job.

Here are six other strategies I learned along the way:

1. Interview the potential sales lead as much as they interviewed me.

2. Make sure I was getting in front of the right customer first. That meant someone who valued their time,  comfort and care for their home as much if not more than their money.

3. Let them know when I’d be in their neighborhood and that I’d need to make sure that all decision-makers would be there rather than my asking them when it would be convenient for them.

4. Offer them the days of the week I do sales calls.

5. Offer them a two-hour time slot so I wouldn’t have to race between calls.

6. And for those I couldn’t accommodate during the week I offered two time slots on Saturday morning only.

Amazingly, when I followed this process, I did get in front of the right customers. Surprisingly, my closing rate went up. Miraculously, the profit per sale went up.

ANNOUNCEMENT: PM Columnist Hosts Online Growth Seminar

Business consultant Al Levi, who writes a monthly column for Plumbing & Mechanical and blogs for other BNP Media trade magazines, will present an online business seminar, “Growing Big In A Recession,” June 1 at 12 noon CST. The June date will be the first part of six total seminars with the others taking place every two weeks. Each online seminar is expected to last one hour.

Levi already held his first Grow Big seminar series last January and has since added additional features to add to the experience. Participants will receive forms, procedures, a “Grow Big Optimizer” CD and have the opportunity to email Levi for further support up to 60 days after the series is over.

For more information and to register, log on to www.GrowBigInARecssion.com. The website also includes several video testimonies from contractors who took part in the first seminar series - and got their phone ringing and their companies growing again.

Anyone interested in taking part will need to register by May 25. Levi provides geographically exclusivity to participants within a 30-mile radius of their businesses. There is a charge for the seminar, but there is also a money-back guarantee.