Walk into any business on a rainy day and for the most part, they’re empty. Everyone is relaxed. You get great service and lots of attention. No one seems to be really busy which seems to me like a perfect time to cold call. The owner is in. Business is slow. They don’t really have anything to do but talk to you. Chances are you’ll be the only sales person that walks in the door today. Why not?

This dawned on me early in my sales career. When you’re out there every day competing for the attention of a buyer or business owner, you look for ways to stand out. I realized that all my counterparts were in their little cubicles doing paperwork, making phone calls and setting appointments for tomorrow when it wasn’t going to be raining.

So, I grabbed an umbrella and hit the road. It was amazing. Very rarely did I walk into a business that I didn’t get to speak to a decision maker. I mean, think about it. I just completely set myself apart from everyone. I’m the one that will get out in the rain, get my feet wet and work a little harder for the business. This speaks volumes to someone you’re trying to do business with. Who wants to give their money to someone who only wants to work when everything is nice and sunny? Get it?

I went to a business networking meeting this morning and attendance was pretty bad. This is a weekly meeting that people pay to go to so they can get referrals to make more money. But it was raining. It was raining HARD. Apparently, that was enough to keep at least 50% of the regular attendees from venturing out. It just looked like another opportunity to me.

Do you know what a rainmaker is? Dictionary.com says a rainmaker is “One who is known for achieving excellent results in a profession or field, such as business or politics”. Is that you? What do you do when it rains? Are you one of those people who would have skipped the meeting? Do you sit in your office and try to get people on the phone? Are you doing your expense report? Stop.

Try it just once. You’ll be surprised at the results. Be a rainmaker. Next time it rains, put on your best suit. Give yourself a little pep talk, grab your umbrella and hit the streets. Take plenty of business cards and be ready. I bet you make a little money.

Michelle C. Ritter is a the owner of http://www.e-worc.com , a web design and sales consulting company where she works with many types of product and service based industries in developing sales and marketing plans and effective online programs. She specializes in cross-industry communication and teaches a series of seminars for MTI Business Solutions http://www.mobiletechwebsite.com that focus on teaching others to enjoy success in sales by learning how to speak in the language of the buyer.

Author: Michelle Ritter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Digital Camera Times

For about 18 months I’ve been a very happy user of VAServ’s cheap and cheerful VPS platform. The control panel was called LXAdmin (later renamed to Kloxo). A major series of security bugs was found a few weeks ago, and last Sunday the security company that identified the bugs decided in their wisdom to publish the bug list online because they had not had a response to their emails to LXLabs.

Well the sky fell in, and the fall out has been very painful. VAServ lost just about everything: over 100,000 domains taken off line while they tried to fix the break-in/security breach(es). For this company the pain is awful as they have been forced to be acquired (as far as I understand the email I received) by their UK datacentre partner who supplied man power to help out. I doubt the owner, who spent years building his company up, received very much if anything for it.

I lost all my domains. The reason you are seeing this is because I was forced to move to Hostgator to try and get my domains back up and running – I’m one of the lucky ones in that I had full backups of all my sites, both SQL and themes/plugins etc. Not everyone will have been so lucky.

Which brings me to the unfortunate owner of LXLabs who sadly appears to have committed suicide on Monday.

Is a software flaw, no matter how serious, really worth a life?