Creating a help squad is the answer to the big mistake that sales people make, that is trying to build a successful sales career on their own, without an help from their Sphere of Influence. A Sphere of Influence data base is all the people you know and consequently all the people that they know.

So some easy numbers : if you know 100 people and they each know 100 people than you have the ability to make contact with 10,000 people it’s just that 9900 of them you haven’t met yet. By tapping into this database, you have so many more times the opportunity to do business. Your sphere of influence will consist of all your friends, family members as well as everyone you have ever met. Trades people, professional people, sporting clubs, hobby and school contacts too As a rule, everyone you meet should go into your database; you never know when that contact will be useful to you, or when you can be helpful to them. A mistake many sales people make is to try to get their immediate database to do business with them, right now.

For a start, as in the example we just talked about, this limits you to just 100 people. But if you take a strategy of using the 100 people you know to reach the other 9900 people then the game changes dramatically.

Your personal data base wants you to be successful, they just don’t know how to help you yet? So you need to start to train your database to help find you business. One of the easiest ways to start this process is to make sure that every time you meet anyone, anyone at all, that you ask them this, Do you know anyone who might be thinking of buying or selling ( your product)?? in the near future?’ Don’t try to sell them something today, ask them to refer you to someone they know who needs your service. By the way if they want to do business with you, they will say so. Give them your card, and swap it for theirs. In fact give them 6 cards that they can hand out to other people for you.

One trick I like to use is to prompt them to put your cards in the glove box of their car. We all know that the glove box is rarely emptied out, and sure enough, at some much later date when they are asked, if they can nominate the best person for the job, they will remember they have your card in their car and they will surely pass it on for you.

Give and you shall receive is the other important strategy. So often we are going for the sale, instead of offering to help someone else become successful, and by way of doing this we train them to see the value in referrals. Giving out a referral to your Sphere of Influence is like throwing pebbles into the pond. Each time you through one in, a ripple runs out across the water, soon or later it will bounce off something and the ripple will return to you. The more pebbles you throw in the pond the more come back your way.

Start today to make your database your most powerful marketing tool. Meet with them as often as you can, even form a regular meeting arrangements like a breakfast meeting or a monthly lunch, use this time to share ideas and refer business between each other. You will soon become the sales person for the whole group, just start throwing pebbles in the pond!

So you see, creating a help squad has a far wider effect than just a quick sale for today – to the people you know.