There's nothing better for business than a booming economy. Unfortunately, it often encourages faulty thinking and spawns erroneous ideas. When sales are strong and profits meet projections, we're quick to take the credit. When things go sour, external forces get the blame.
A good economy tends to mask distorted thinking and inappropriate ideas. For example, personal computer sales have been drifting downward, even while prices have been dropping. Manufacturers are petrified. Out of near desperation, they jack up power to a sizzling 500 MHz to try to capture customer attention. Just as this happens, free PCs appear. In the midst of all this, one company rediscovers itself. To IBM's credit, it figured out what business it's in: solutions.

Becoming accustomed to a growing economy is easy and dangerous. Although there are always pockets of problems, we forget that success is often more the result of a good economy than our business acumen. If everyone else is doing well, our major challenge becomes how to pull ahead of the pack. Unfortunately, many business people tend to get a bit lazy-and that's when we can get caught.
There are ways to become more successful, keep business booming, and give companies the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. Here are 15 ways to develop an extra edge:

HOW TO STRENGTHEN AGENCY-COMPANY RELATIONSHIPS by Emily Huling Use this five-step approach to get and keep company relationships strong. Your eyes open with t...

JOIN FORCES WITH A LIFE PROFESSIONAL by Harlan Warthen Harlan Warthen provides a simple, field proven, cost-effective program that you can use to produce a consistent flow of highly qualifi...

LIFE GUIDE FOR P/C AGENCIES INTRODUCTION OVERVIEW This Guide has been created to help you, the P/C agent, establish a systematic, profitable marketing program fo...

To succeed in today’s selling environment, you’ll need to think out of the box.
There’s one revolution no one wants to think about, let alone discuss. It’s what’s happening to selling. Although the Internet has a profound effect on sales, it isn’t the only challenge facing salespeople. In fact, the Internet might only be the tip of the iceberg.

Call it branding. Call it marketing. Call it whatever you want. But it has the singular objective of motivating the right customer to want to do business with a particular company or to buy a particular product or service. In this document, John Graham lays to rest some common misconceptions on the role of marketing.

REACH OUT AND SELL SOMEONE by Gregory Jordahl Think of your telephone book as a roster of almost every potential prospect in town. Flip to the white pages and pick a name. You may h...

SALES CAMPAIGNS: MODULE V INTRODUCTION This module is designed to give you specific information about marketing selected Life insurance products. You'll find tha...