Oklahoma City has certainly had a long, thriving love affair with “black gold.” For well over 100 years our city has enjoyed the economic benefits of our oil and gas industry, but things are changing in Oklahoma City.

The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce dates back to the land run. For 125 years, the chamber has been the voice of business and the visionary organization in Oklahoma City. Our number one priority is economic development. We’ve been successful in meeting that goal by attracting quality jobs. Our focus is on increasing jobs that add value by providing a good or service, then exporting that good or service and importing the wealth. These are what we call primary jobs.

Miles Hall, owner of H & H Shooting Sports sat down with me for a Q&A about how he and his wife, Jayne, built a highly successful business and reinvigorated an industry that was becoming stagnant. This is part two of our two part session.

Miles Hall, Founder & President of H & H Shooting Sports sat down with me for a brief Q&A about how he and his wife, Jayne, built a highly successful business, and reinvigorated an industry that was stagnant. This is part one of our two part session.

By the time they’ve reached college, there are certainly more young people considering going into sales, but most seem to think of it as a short-term job – something to pay the bills until they reach a different destination.

Sales is a profession that doesn’t get much respect. More often than not, if you tell someone that you’re in sales they immediately think of all the bad sales experiences they’ve had and knock you down a rung in their mind.

Most salespeople I know like repeat business, but very few of them put in the effort to make that happen. Even sales veterans are guilty of dropping the ball once the first sale is complete and moving on to the next prospect.

Obviously, you’ve always got to work at bringing in new clients, but taking your existing clients for granted and not maintaining those relationships is a surefire way to make your first sale with them you’re only sale with them.

It takes a lot of work to get to the point that you’re sitting down to meet with a potential client or even scheduling that meeting in the first place. Discovering the prospect, networking towards them, getting an introduction – all these things take a lot of time and effort.

But if we’re not careful, we can blow the sale and waste all that work before we’ve even had a chance to explain what we’re selling.

Not many of us use actual rolodexes any more. Most of us went digital several years ago. All those contacts who used to be represented by paper cards now have their home in our e-mail and on our cell phones.

I think we may have lost something in the transition. I’m not anti-technology. It just that when a contact is just a name on a screen it becomes harder to appreciate the value of that relationship.

If you’re a business owner or salesperson, you probably spend a lot of time going to networking events, hoping you’ll find the right connections. For most events…