Although it's useful to get away from the office periodically, the cost of business travel can take a big bite out of your operating funds - and your time.

Fortunately, you don't have to meet face to face to stay in contact with customers or to benefit from suppliers or other business contacts. Often you can accomplish your business goals without traveling by using one or more of these strategies:

• Mail product literature
• Make periodic phone calls to stay in touch with customers
• Set up a conference call instead of a meeting
• Set up a webinar instead of an in-person meeting. Add a telephone conference line and your customers will be able to hear you talk while you display your PowerPoint slides in the webinar
• Buy training tapes instead of sending staff to distant cities.
• Videotape your sales presentation and send the videotape to prospects. Follow up with in-person sales calls only if the prospect shows a sincere interest in making a purchase
• Create a multimedia presentation featuring your product or service and send your prospects a disk containing the presentation
• Create a catalog on disk and mail the disk to customers
• Locate sales agents or distributors to sell your products in other states

Don't fall into the trap of trying to wine and dine customers into buying your products. Sell them with benefits instead. If you must demo your products to make sales, and have to do so frequently, consider having a video made and sending the video out to prospects. Or, put a demo on disk.

More >> 6 Steps to Creating Online Presentations for Telephone Selling

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