For Jeffrey Gitomer, co-author of Knock Your Socks Off Selling (AMACOM, 1999), the equation is simple. “If you’re not making it in sales today, get out of selling,” he says. “There’s no doubt we are in the biggest boom economy in the history of mankind. This is the time where the bacon has the most fat on it, ever.”

He ominously adds that such boom times can be the death of salespeople who neglect to reinvent themselves. The successful salesperson in today’s boom economy is busier than ever, playing a more complex role than five years ago. While the take-home bacon has plenty of fat, companies have been relentless in trimming the excess from their budgets, cutting sales forces down to lean, mean teams pursuing higher quotas. Savvy customers, now as informed as salespeople, demand added value. They also expect you to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Is success stressful? You bet, except for those who are coasting…who are notching good sales without trying. But for how long? Can you risk a downturn in the economy or a business or product line that might go from boom to bust in six months?

Read on as experts tell sales professionals what it takes to get more and keep more in today’s raging-bull economy.

Stress of Success
“The stress of success can be just as bad as the stress of not selling,” says Mark Gardner, managing partner with OnTarget Inc., a global sales training and consulting firm whose two biggest clients are Cisco and Microsoft.

“It’s all about speed and productivity in today’s market,” says Gardner, who sees an interesting paradox. “It’s a comfort to know you’re making money, and there’s gratification in working hard and pleasing customers. That’s a relief of stress.

“But salespeople add stress in two ways: They recognize their lives are way out of balance and they wonder, ‘Am I doing the right thing?'”

Typically, today’s highest-flying salespeople work six or seven days a week and have no life outside the job. How do they cope? “They know they’re in the money machine,” says Gardner. “Imagine being in a wind tunnel with $100 bills flying at you from every direction. You don’t know how long it’s going to keep up, so you grab everything you can.

“Salespeople manage by thinking they’ll go fast for four years, then get out. But the business is addicting. Some people get a definite high from it,” says Gardner.

The danger? While the intermediary goal may be to grab as much as you can as fast as you can, the reality is, it quickly becomes a way of life. And for those who are unsure whether this is the right field for them, that adds stress.

” If salespeople lose a big deal, or some other crisis happens – and that’s the nature of sales – it really whacks them out if they’re unsure,” says Gardner. “It becomes bad when things change. And in a boom economy, things change fast. I see some people start to crack up. Most of my clients feel that if a salesperson lasts three or four years, that’s OK.”

Despite the stress, Gardner sees lots of happy salespeople. “There’s no complacency within this group as in ‘tomorrow I can slow down,’ but they do become complacent about their course.”

That’s where they can get into trouble. “What worked yesterday, they’ll use today,” says Gardner. And that doesn’t always keep working. “Take for example the application software business; it’s in the toilet, and it happened in six months,” said Gardner. And when they become a takeover target, stress once again sets in: Will they survive, and who’s going to buy them?

Role Transformations
“One could think that the boom economy would translate into a joy ride for salespeople,” says Nick Ward, CEO of MOHR Development, a research-based sales consulting and training firm. “It’s also a voracious and intensely competitive market, more so than I’ve ever seen – and in every industry. But what it really has resulted in is intensifying pressure on companies to be relentless in driving costs out of their systems.”

The salesperson has evolved from being a conduit of information – since the Internet has made the customer infinitely more sophisticated – to someone who can offer expertise in the client’s business, work the financial deal and further add value to their bottom line.

“Salespeople are under enormous pressure to justify their role in their companies and sustain margins in the process,” says Ward. “They have had to transform their role, and it’s a radical transformation. Some people are succeeding and many are failing. We’re hearing salesperson after salesperson come to us and say, ‘It’s not as professional as it used to be; I’m not having fun anymore.'”

Those who are failing are ones whose ability lay in building strong relationships with customers by being sources of expertise about their product. That is no longer of value, says Ward. “They just don’t understand it. The truth is, their organizations can’t afford them anymore. In the relentless pressure to drive costs down, those salespeople are probably going to find themselves without jobs – they’ll be disintermediated, replaced by electronic catalogs.”

Those who are succeeding, however, are literally creating value for their customers. “They are building relationships where they are wrapping their products in a constellation of services customized for that individual customer,” says Ward. “They have become an expert in their customers’ organization and in their customers’ customers. They really must be tremendously creative in the way they leverage and use their knowledge and skills.”

“People who aren’t good at this, who don’t get it, are just beating their heads against the wall, climbing into more frustration than you can imagine. And there are many fewer salespeople. The truth is that the salespeople who are just conveyors of knowledge are being driven out of the system,” says Ward.

Well Connected
There’s no doubt that in today’s “more” economy, salespeople are expected to be accessible 24/7. “They wear a pager on one hip and a cell phone on the other,” says author-speaker Renee Walkup, and that’s in addition to voice mail, fax and email. “Ten years ago, most companies wouldn’t pay for their reps to carry a cell phone. Now just about everyone does. Managers are preaching, ‘Because this is a competitive market, you need to be accessible 24 hours a day.’ Everyone is busier in a boom economy, but everyone also wants more attention,” says Walkup.

In reality, are all your customers going to be calling you at midnight? Of course not. “You have to give that availability to certain people more than others,” advises Gitomer. “You pick your top customers and give them your personal number and say, ‘If you need me call me.’ Simply making the gesture says a lot.

“More also means faster,” says Gitomer. “As technology changes, you have to keep up with the response factor. Some think it’s OK to get back to your customers the next day. Some have a voice recording on their telephone saying our office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. In an economy of more, you have to give your customers multiple options, and in a world of options, the phrase ‘Your call will be answered in the order it was received’ is not an option. When I’m standing in line or on hold, what the company is telling me is, ‘I don’t value your time.'”

The salesperson must be able to respond quicker with more accurate information in a way that is perceived by the customer as help. “A purchasing agent told me, ‘Fire all your vendors that don’t help you,'” says Gitomer. “That’s where personalization comes in. Humans will interact and create some additional value for the customer. And by the way, don’t think that additional value is free shipping. Or we deliver in 24 hours. That’s no additional value to me.

“An example of something that helps me build my business? Say I’m in a building supply business and I’m looking to sell my product to contractors, and you’re a vendor to me. You go to the building permit division and bring me all the new filings for building permits and say, ‘I thought I’d stop by and get these fresh leads to you.’ That’s helping me build my business. Do that and this customer will not question your value added – it’s obvious in his bottom line,” says Gitomer.

Sellathon
There’s an old expression that says, If you want to make God laugh, show him your business plan. But if you want to make him howl, show him your sales report.

“Most salespeople make the fatal mistake of looking for more in the arena that will give them the least,” says Gitomer. “Most salespeople cold call, the lowest-percentage sales call in the world. If you had to make 10 sales in a month, which would you rather have – a list of 1,000 people to call or 10 referrals? How do you get referrals? Not by cold calling. In a ‘more’ economy, the key is more referrals. The key is more relationships.”

Unfortunately, because many salespeople are running around making quotas, they’re not willing to spend enough time with existing customers to build business friendships. Or the company has said, ‘Make 400 cold calls in a month.’ So they sit home Sunday night planning how many cold calls they’re going to lie about in their report.

“There is a commodity world that is ever evolving through the Internet. People who are buying price only, who don’t want to deal with salespeople, will use the Web. Whole industries will be shaken by that: the insurance industry, the stock brokerage industry, soon the automobile industry. Fifty percent of people who go to buy a car shop the Web first and then bring their info into the car dealership. All the Web sites are missing is the button that says buy now. As soon as they put that button in there, car salespeople are dead ducks,” says Gitomer.

Up the Ante
It’s been a fantastic boom time for his business, says Jim Jumpe, national sales manager for Irwin Home Equity, a San Ramon, CA, company that’s been riding the tsunami of second mortgages. But with interest rates notching up, that market is crashing and Jumpe knows it. “We’re always reaching for more, but we have to be asking ourselves, ‘What will we do when the floor falls out?’ For us, that means reinventing ourselves – we need to be changing and evolving. We’re providing more customer service, for instance. But the key point is: You cannot be stagnant in this market. You always need to be looking at new techniques.”

So, how exactly do you keep upping the ante in today’s high-stakes sales world? Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and a busy Newport Beach, CA, motivational trainer, advises using an old-fashioned technique: “I tell people to set a specific, concrete goal, write it down, sign it, then wrap it in a $100 bill and look at it four times a day. This keeps you focused on your goal and why you’re putting out effort to achieve high-level results. Doing just this is a big step toward meeting any goal.” There’s no doubting the technique works. In the past decade, Hansen’s seen more than a dozen of his Chicken Soup books hit the bestseller lists.

Even so, eventually the boom economy will end. Maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later the cycle of sustained growth will stall – will you go down with it? Can you adapt to tauter times when less has to suffice? You’ll do fine if you go back to basics, says San Francisco-based sales trainer Patricia Fripp. She frequently talks with salespeople who have hit a wall – then started seeing their sales fall. Here is what she tells them: “Your efforts have to be ongoing and relentless, in good times and not-so-good times. Use as many techniques as you can think of to stay in front of customers and prospects. Send handwritten thank-you notes to buyers; stay in touch with prospects with email newsletters; get involved in community groups. Your sales fall when you’ve stopped marketing. To maintain your sales, you’ve got to maintain your commitment to marketing. That’s how you’ll keep selling.”

“The good salespeople thrive, in good times and lean,” adds Pam Lontos, an Orlando, Florida-based sales trainer. “They’ve built the relationships, mastered the skills and know that continuous learning is the only way to continually prosper in sales. Long-term sales success is easy – if you’ve committed to do the work.”