No kidding, this is the best time ever to be a salesperson. If you are in sales, especially electronics sales, selling PCB design, fabrication, and /or assembly services this is your time. Your services are wanted. Every single company in the business today wants to meet you. It doesn’t matter if you are a direct salesperson or an independent rep, companies want to hire or sign you. Companies are looking for good salespeople. Heck, they are even hiring mediocre salespeople and hoping they can change them. Some are willing to hire youngsters and train them. Everyone wants a good sales team.

Sales managers do not despair, companies are looking for you as well. If you have experience in building and managing a sales team, people want you, companies are looking for you, and they will pay top dollar to hire you and make you part of their team.

I’ll say it again, there has never been a better time to be in electronic sales. But, for another reason, and that is that there has never been more of an opportunity to be outstanding. To be the best in your field. All you have to do is adapt to the new world order of doing business in the 21^st century. Not as easy as it sounds, but then again, not as hard as you think it is either.

Here are ten things you have to do to be the best in your profession in the 21^st century.

The first five are easy, all you have to do is forget:

1.Forget the way you have always done it, that doesn’t work anymore. Don’t blame the customers, don’t blame the millennials (yes stop blaming them for everything!). Find a new way to do things.

2. Stop complaining that you can’t get appointments, because you can’t and the reason you can’t is that you are boring.

3. Stop being boring! Stop trying to ‘sell” everybody hates being sold.

4. Stop paying attention to the old rules, they don’t apply any longer. There is a new world order out there and you have to learn it and get with it.

5. Get out of your comfort zone. Stop doing what comes naturally for you based on years of doing things the same way. There is a new world order, learn it and get with it.

Now the five things that you have to do to be successful: to be a true 21^st century sales warrior:

1.Learn how to connect, how to communicate with people the new way. Use social media to get to your customer base. Send them information that they need, and want, and most importantly value.

2. Develop your ideal customer profile based on what you sell and who wants it. Then do your research on Google and Linkedin and find the customers you want to win over.

3. Connect with them, send them some information they will find valuable. Not some boring brochure about your company, but something valuable, information, data, articles that pertain to their industry in general and their business specifically. Something that will help them, from the buyer, to the engineers, and program managers, something they care about.

4. Make yourself valuable. If you connect in the right way. If you position yourself as the person who can help your customers be successful, your customers will come to you. Your customers will actually want to do business with you.

5. Be visible. Write a blog, write a column, put out a newsletter or tech bulletin, write a book, write an e-book, write a micro-book. Anything that will show your value to the market you are addressing. Make yourself the “go to” person in your field and people/ read customers will beat that proverbial path to your door.

And one more – always under promise, and over deliver.

6. Focus, and I mean always focus on the customer. You are in the business of serving your customer and that means doing whatever you can to make that customer successful. The path to your own success as a salesperson is making your customer successful. If you always have that goal in mind you will always be the greatest salesperson in your field.

Sorry, I thought of another one as well.

7. Help people, dedicate your life to helping everyone you meet. Be generous, and in the end, people will be generous to you. This even true for those who have tried to do you an injustice. Be helpful to them, it makes you feel better, it’s fun, and it really freaks them out!

So, get rid of everything you thought you knew about sales, see items 1 through 5; and start working on what you need to know about sales, see the last 7 items, and you will be on your way to becoming the world’s greatest salesperson. And since salespeople are now the hottest commodity on the market today, just think how well you will do and how rich you will be! It’s only common sense.