photo credit: Csaba_Bajko

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or sales professional you need all the help you can get to make your life easier.

You balance a lot of responsibilities throughout your day.

You simply have to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way.

Sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised to find how much a simple tool can do to improve your life.

I’ve decided to share 7 of my favorite tools with you because I hope you find them as useful as I do. Some of these tools are completely free others require a small investment or a trip to your local library. In any case there’s nothing preventing you from trying these tools and improving your life. Plus you could increase your sales along the way.

So here’s the list not listed in order of importance:

1. Cool Timer - This is a piece of free software you download to your computer. You can use it as a stop watch, a timer, or an alarm. Now you never have to search for a stop watch or worry about dead batteries. Just click on the icon on your desk top anytime you want to use it. One of my favorite ways to use it is to manage 30 minutes of focused and concentrated work.
2. Mindmeister - This is another free tool you get simply by registering. Don’t just use this tool for projects use it to plan out anything involving several actions. When you’re finished your mind map is saved to your account plus you can print out this neat and tidy mind map to use as you take those desired actions so you never miss a beat.

   Behind every successful person is a good library. Here are a couple books you must add to yours.

3. ”The Race to Success – Make Time to Win” - The way you use your time is a big differentiator between the super sales producers and the average producers. If you find yourself rushing from one thing to another with no end in sight; if you rely on a calendar, PDA, or CRM yet they don’t seem to work this book will help you understand why. Make sure your local library has at least one copy.
4. ”The SPIN Selling Fieldbook” - Neil Rackham isn’t a sales person he’s a researcher. The fieldbook takes his research and transforms what he learned into actionable sales ideas. Anyone selling an intangible or a high ticket item must have this book and internalize it.
5. ”The On-Purpose Person” - Kevin McCarthy will help you do something few people ever do, most wouldn’t even think of doing, and everyone who wants huge success must do. This book will get your head in the real game.
6. Carbonite - I’ve had a computer crash on me so many times I’ve lost count. Each time it was a dramatic traumatic experience. Each time there were things I lost forever including precious contacts. You can get a free trial for this service that quietly works in the background so when that crash happens you can restore absolutely everything including all your computer settings in minutes.
7. Google Calendar - The reasons I like Google calendar include the fact you can share your calendar, you can have more than one calendar, you can access from any computer, and your calendar syncs automatically with your phone. So you can check and make appointments from your phone and they automatically appear in your Google calendar online.

How many of these sales tools are you using?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Sales Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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