But let me tell you who taught it to me.

Jim was President of the smaller leasing company that the behemoth leasing company I worked for, bought. A University of Chicago trained philosophy major, Jim was a delight to talk to, always bringing a fresh and oblique angle to discussions, as you might imagine.

Anyway, as we were sitting in his Beverly Hills, California office he was telling me about the car business in Chicago. His family had a car lot or a dealership, I not sure which, but in those days salesmen wore roller skates, presumably in good weather.

This was so they could race up to customers, shuttle back and forth to their managers to bring the latest offer or counteroffer, and maybe to get some exercise, too.

Jim said the fastest moving salesmen would try to "skate deals," which is to say steal the prospects slower rollers were hoping to work on.

What an image! Roller-skating for dollars!

There is a chance to skate deals today, whatever business you're in, but instead of donning special footgear, all you have to do is be fast with the Internet.

The key is to find the best prospects and determine which products to sell to them, and I like to analyze web sites to determine how my competitors and others are defining "What's hot?" right now.

For instance, I do a lot of training and speaking and I'm always trying to invent better topics or at least new slants on old ones. Sometimes, when the well turns dry, I turn outward to see what others are doing.

As Peter F. Drucker said in his book, INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP, "For those genuinely willing to go out into the field, to look and to listen" it can be "both a highly productive and a highly dependable innovative opportunity."

Today, "the field" isn't always a place you drive to, but a web site you surf, making "looking" and "listening" much faster, easier, and especially rewarding.

Within a good hour or two I can determine which topics are selling by scanning the number of public seminar dates that companies are scheduling in various cities. For instance, at this moment, I can surmise there is a significantly diminishing market for Customer Service as a topic, because a number of providers have cut back their training dates.

By examining their online brochures, I can see the exact outlines of classes, subjects covered, and in many cases, exactly how much time is allocated to each unit. And based on the testimonials I can see who is attending, by company name, which indicates what industries competitors are trying to tap into.

Pricing and hotels tell me how much the market will bear, and where I might want to locate my programs, as well.

The wealth of competitive information that is out there is stunning. It almost makes "being the fastest with the mostest," a typical entrepreneurial strategy, a dumb move when you can use "creative imitation" instead, to use Drucker's terminology.

So, get those skates ready, and prosper!