Sales success on a shoestring

Revenues got you down? Sales funnel pretty empty? Don't have lots to spend on marketing and sales initiatives? What's a businessperson to do?

While it's more than terrific to have a fantastic marketing and PR plan helping you to build business and create and maintain awareness and credibility (and the budget to support it), there are lots of tactics that you can deploy to ratchet up sales without breaking the bank.

Here are some things that you can start to do immediately:

• Mine the gold in your existing database. Prospects that never turned into clients, dormant accounts and even marginal accounts represent your fastest return on investment and time. They already know you and have respect for your business, thereby making the sales cycle much shorter and potentially more lucrative.
• Develop an informational webinar or tele-session. It will help to spotlight you as an expert and thought leader. Use social media to promote the program. At the very least, you will gain visibility for your know-how.
• Be a better networker. Give more referrals and make more introductions. You know the old clich?, "givers get." Take that to heart and make it a point to make five introductions per week, or even per day.
• Ask for referrals. Your satisfied existing clients can be an excellent conduit to more business. Most people don't get referrals simply because they don't ask.

Start today before you're stuck in the fourth quarter and businesses start using the "holiday season" as their rationale for not starting anything new.