The Richwood Report

Not everyone who enquires about your services is serious about doing business. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of reasons people ask you for proposals. Most of them have nothing to do with buying anything from you! It's a great moment in anyone's career when they notice that working hard does not guarantee success. In other words, that there are lots of ways of staying really busy that make no money at all. Really successful people have learned how to concentrate their efforts on productive activity. Here is an article about that very thing from SalesAutopsy.com, a site with a lot of other helpful material for people who sell.
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This article deals with basic time and resource management methods that can help us all get more done in the time we have. You probably already do a lot of these things but check for the ones you need to brush up on. This quote about salesmanship is worth the whole article:

Selling does not have to be a complicated or daunting process. Selling is nothing more than helping people get what they want. People will buy only if they can see the benefit to them and believe that it outweighs the cost involved. Your sales job, then, is to identify a prospect's needs and show him or her a beneficial way to meet those needs. This kind of selling is non-manipulative. It requires common sense rather than dazzling powers of persuasion. As F.W. Woolworth once brilliantly put it, "I am the worst salesman, therefore I must make it easy for people to buy."

Richwood will be exhibiting at the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2005 show in Las Vegas, NV March 15-19. Check back for later reports from the show.

Lawrence Steinmetz gives some helpful guidance on how to be successful selling when your price is not the lowest. As a matter of fact, he says that real selling only takes place when you can show that your product is worth the price.

Anyone who has ever attended a purchasing training seminar knows they teach, 1) Always challenge the seller's price, 2) Always tell the seller their price is too high, 3) Always tell the seller you can get it cheaper down the street, and 4) If you don't ask for a discount, you won't get it.
They also teach buyers to prey on the seller's insecurities. The seller doesn't know whether the customer can get it down the street for less money, whether the competitor down the street has it in stock, can deliver it, on time, as promised, and whether the competitor provides the same general level of services, technical help, support, inventory, order turn-around time, etc., at the same price. It's easy for customers to say your competitor does all these things; it's something else for that to be true.
If customers beat you up for lower prices, you are probably inviting and encouraging those actions. How do salespeople invite customers to hammer them for price cuts or discounts? Usually, it is either through "wowing" or "cracking."

Learn what wowing and cracking are and how to avoid them. His final thought:

If price were the only reason people bought anything, only one seller would win: whoever could survive the longest at the lowest price until everyone else goes broke. A corollary is that if price were the only reason anyone bought anything, we wouldn't need sales reps.

Ron Khol of Machine Design magazine has his latest "Write Your Own Editorial" editorial up. He includes a selection of fascinating figures he has collected from various sources. I thought the auto industry figures in the last paragraph were especially notable but you may have other interests. It appears that the Ford Motor Company needs to buy a bigger truck. Maybe they can give themselves a discount.