Early in my business career, I was an engineer in a technical support group. We were often called on to travel to customers' locations in order to solve problems. One rule in the company was that engineers had to be accompanied by a technical sales rep. The salesperson was there to translate the blunt recommendations of engineers into words suitable for the customer.

Traveling with salespeople was a great learning experience for me. One of the best was Frank Moore who willingly shared his secrets with me. One of Frank's tips was to wear good shoes, so you had happy feet. This was a carry over from the 1940s when salespeople did a lot of walking. If your feet were sore, you'd have a tough time staying upbeat on those sales calls. Frank suggested having a couple of pairs of shoes and, when you weren't wearing them, slip a shoe tree inside each one so they kept their shape. These days good shoes are less important to success. You drive to your client, park in front of their door and, at the end of the day, drive to dinner and your hotel. Tired feet are no longer a problem.

I did take Frank's other advice and it has served me well because it is timeless. Frank told me, "Never make a call unless you have something to say." That's easy when you're meeting a prospect for the first time. It's harder when you're making follow-up calls. Frank would tear articles out of business magazines and hand them out to customers saying, "I read this and thought of you. I felt you might be able to use this information in your business." Great idea. Today, we don't make in-person calls as much as people did in the 1960s but there's no reason that you couldn't fax or mail a copy of an article to a customer or prospect with a handwritten note. Let them know you're thinking about them and interested in their business.

Frank used to have some of his standard technical recommendations printed up to hand out to customers and prospects as he deemed appropriate. "People remember you better if you have handouts." That's still true. Give prospects a concrete reason to remember you. Frank also kept detailed notes on his customers; he knew about their companies and about their families, too. "Did you buy that new scale for the shipping department you were telling me about last month? How's it working?" "Well, how's your daughter, Suzie, doing? Is she still at WSU?" Frank told me that you don't sell to companies, you sell to people and the better you get to know them the better chance you have of keeping them as customers or clients. Sound advice that's as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. Most sales contact software has plenty of memory available for storage of personal information about customers and prospects.

Technology changes specific techniques. You don't need shoe trees anymore. You don't need to carry change for the pay phone to call your office - just use your cell phone. I still use a Rolodex rotary card file because I like having those little paper cards right in front of me. But that's old fashioned; you can get the same effect by installing a sales-tracking or contact management database on your laptop or PDA. But such software is useless unless you have basic techniques in place for gathering information in the first place and much of that information may come from your present customers. You'll probably get it the same way Frank did - by asking questions.

Techniques may change but the basic business principles are the same as they were in the 1940s. To steal a line from Casablanca, a movie from the same era, "... the fundamental things apply as time goes by."