School bids can be frustrating. At some point, you’ve probably spent hours working up a school bid, only to lose to a competitor. Still, there’s money to be made in school bidding, if you go about it the right way. Here, Tracy Leenman, owner of Musical Innovations in Greenville, S.C., looks at five ways music retailers can win in the school bid business. Get her tips for long-term success.

Do you have one too many products celebrating a birthday at your store? Is distressed merchandise choking your inventory? At the 2015 NAMM Show, Bob Popyk, sales expert and Music Trades Magazine columnist, and Alan Friedman, music retail financial guru and partner at Friedman, Kannenberg & Co., teamed up to reveal practical ideas to move obsolete and dated merchandise out the door.

During the holidays, you'll come face to face with more new customers than usual, giving you a chance to earn their current and future business. Sales guru Kenny Smith offers 10 selling pointers to help you brush up your skills and make the most of every customer interaction. "Many times, when people describe what they want to accomplish with a product, we have something even better to offer them," Smith says. Follow his lead for a plentiful holiday season!

There are salespeople and then there are business development specialists. Some salespeople think they're successful because they have a title, a customer list and a few big-ticket sales behind them. Business development specialists, on the other hand, don't need a title, a territory or special pricing programs. So which one are you? Here are 10 ways to know if you're a business development specialist.

Key sales and marketing strategies from "40 Tips for Music Professionals 40 and Under"—a NAMM U session presented at The NAMM Show 2013. The session was hosted by Cris Behrens (pictured), CJ Averwater and Ryan West of NAMM YP (Young Professionals). Use this as a checklist, and share it with your employees.

After watching her guitar pack sales drop, Lauren Haas Amanfoh of Royalton Music Center decided to change her sales strategy during the holidays. She devised a three-step approach to bump customers up to a higher price point. The result? A 300-percent rise in acoustic guitar sales and a doubling of her electric guitar sales volume. Find out how she did it.

Business growth requires different actions as the market changes. Small-business guru Barry Moltz identifies ways that businesses get stuck, causing their growth to stagnate. By making changes to these ineffective patterns, your business can start to flourish again. Watch Moltz's session, and learn how to boost revenue and avoid the traps that keep businesses struggling for years. Watch the video.

Bob Popyk shows how to take just a few minutes each day to train your sales staff on prospecting, closing, handling incoming calls, greeting the customer, handling complaints, dealing with the Internet shopper, creating add-on sales, developing customer rapport and preventing anyone from walking away without buying. Sound difficult? It’s not.

George Hines, owner of George's Music Stores, Inc., provides valuable tips and insights through these sales training materials, videos and course.  Website: http://www.georgesmusic.com/  The course is structured to allow you to start and stop as needed, and to easily get back to the area of interest.

It's easy to make assumptions about customers.  Sometimes we fail to address the real reason why a customer visits our store.  Establishing the customer’s purpose is an integral step in the “Participative Sales Process.”  Likewise, qualifying the customer’s needs is one of the most valuable skills for a salesperson to understand and practice.  When you are able to properly qualify your customer