Yes, there is some snow at Stratton
Yes, Stratton is opening on Thanksgiving
Yes, it's very cold (8 on the beach today)
Yes, I will be snowboarding...again
I was in bed reading my just-arrived edition of Business Week, which, of course, left me with nightmares since it was apparent from the comments made by Geithner that the economy is flat, maybe headed for a double-dip, maybe a decade-long, Japan-era type decline, or maybe something else. The operative word of course was "maybe", and the current takeaways from most economists, all the politicians and the people who are generally in charge of our money is that there's little that they say that gives any of us the comfort that any of them has a clue.
So, it was heartening very early one morning last week to be having breakfast in the Main Street Bakery located on beautifully maintained Main Street in the center of Newport, NH right across the street from the region's largest bank where I needed to be at 8:30 for one of our sales review and training meetings. As a result, I knew that I would be leaving Newport that afternoon with a real life view of what was happening in the real world of small business and just how real businesspeople were thinking about the economy and business in general. I talked with Brenda, the owner of the bakery, and one of my favorite economists. Business for her is noticeably up. Her re-birthed 2010 marketing campaign (new outdoor signs, ads at the Farmer's Market and her email sign-in project) is paying off especially with new corporate customers who are outsourcing their breakfasts to her. Always a bell-weather of small town New England for me, Brenda is the most positive that I have seen her in more than a year. Clearly a glass-is-half-full type of manager.
The rest of the morning was spent with the senior management and 20 plus business development salespeople at the Lake Sunapee Bank, one of New Hampshire's and Vermont's largest regional banks. We've worked together for some time now, and the exuberance and attitude in the room was positive, upbeat, proactive and infectious. Revenues and net income are up for this publicly traded bank which is now $1 billion in size. We always start the meetings with Success Stories, and I finally was forced to cut that opening section short since we had to move on with the agenda for the day. During the meeting, once again I heard highly committed men and women talk openly about sales solutions, trade best selling practices with one and another and work with me and Steve Theroux, the President of LSB, as to how our sales processes, systems and consistent training could be refined even more as we now plan for our vision of what Selling the LSB Way will look like a year from now.
As I drove out of Newport that afternoon, I felt much better about the economy. Obviously, I need to give Tim Geithner a call and have him come with me during the next trip. In the meantime, once again, I realized that the economic condition of America is going to be rebuilt through the hard work, the incorporation of new ideas and the sales and marketing ingenuity of the sales and business development warriors on the front line of the bakeries, the manufacturing companies and the regional banks in the heartland of this country.
As we bump along from one flat economic plateau to another, the questions and comments we need to deal with are no longer "What are you going to do for me?" or "We need to lower our prices because of the competition." To turn this economy around, we need to get out there and simply sell something with proactive solutions by creating detailed sales processes, revitalized sales tools, new techniques and front line training along with easy-to-implement lead generation tactics. The solutions are all around us and the results will be achieved by those sales leaders who simply take charge. My visit to Newport last week proved once again that sales results always improve when dedicated people come together, hold themselves accountable and work on the solutions leaving behind the problems of the economy.
Only 39 selling days left in the year. Good Selling !
Thanks very much for all of your emails and tweets, and b/t/w if you want to get a free copy of the most recent edition of our book, Writing the Winning Business Plan, DOWNLOAD here!
A special thanks to Mary Cole, a well known B2B Marketing & Strategic Development Consultant, and to Steve Wilchins from the law firm, Seegel Lipshutz & Wilchins for their concentrated editing of Writing the Winning Business Plan. Greatly appreciated, Mary and Steve!
Jack
