What Should You be Selling Right Now?

A recent question I posted to the "Sales Best Practices" LinkedIn group:

"In this economy, who do you see having explosive growth? What do you see that the market is craving right now?"

I got a lot of interesting results.  Several talk about outsourced management, cloud computing, etc.  My favorite, from Michael Maisel, is "The one you know best, the one you believe in and the one to which you can add the most value. "

Here are some other comments:

"I think something that is recession proof and works better in recession, is Ice-Cream." – Shelton Rego

Okay, getting the "sins" out of the way – junk food, liquor, drugs, etc. – we continue…

"Emerging technologies such as agile tools, cloud computing, are also a good bet." – Becky Guillory

"VOIP is poised for double digit growth.. VAR’s are waiting for news on approval of Avaya’s buyout of Nortel Business Unit.. Cloud Computing and Virtualization is finding a lot of takers given the opportunity to pay as you go from certain service providers.." – Madhav Narasimhan

"Mobile Marketing. It is a tsunami of growth." – William Baranowski

"Recruitment is back in fashion." – Jake King
I agree.  I’ve seen a steady increase in interest in this myself.

"Direct access to extremely well defined target markets." – Richard Abels

"’Green’ products that are as cheap or cheaper than what they are intended to replace. Health and wellness products, to counteract the stress levels we encounter." – Howard Moll

"Crisis increase crime, stress, illness. Enterprises have to protect their staff in order to get profits. Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) is one of the answers." – Panayiotis Manetos

"I’ve actually found that there has been a major growth in the data industry over the last few months. As companies are now having to market to acquire new business they are looking for good quality data-bases. " – Adam Herbert

"Methods to help clients grow their businesses through inbound marketing. " – Tracy Fox

"Webpage development and internet marketing. The first thing that takes off in a slow economy is marketing and this economy is no different. " – Gary Brown

"Electronic Document Management- There is a paradigm shift happening with companies and how they manage their documents, moving to electronic form PDF. The health care industry is already on its way." – Paul DeMoret

"I’ve found execs pay attention faster and listen longer when you talk about growing revenue. You still need a compelling ROI story, but it seems people are more apt to be open to creative ideas when you speak to their sell-side." – Michael Halperin

"Outsourcing solutions. Every company is looking to achieve more with less. Helping companies survive and possibly thrive during this challenging time definitely has its perks. Decision makers are looking outside the box at new solutions. " – Shannon Taylor

"Demand for Telcommunication products like VOIP, Cell phones. anything that shows true ROI. " – Alexander Kittl

"1.) Medical technology solutions fueled by funding from the stimulus package.  2.) Outsourced business process services that reduce overhead (expense) while delivering high value-based services (examples: various managed IT and healthcare services, outsourced HR and benefits administration, etc.) " – Todd Zielinski

"Healthcare solutions and services- healthcare IT, emergency management and healthcare products.  Also, infrastructure and alternative energy products & solutions. " – Punit Kamrah

"Affordable on-line advertising campaigns. Businesses need a relevant web presence and online campaign that helps consumers looking to buy their products and services, find them! " – Lynne Marmulstein