Have you created your plan for the year? Do you know where you want your sales to be a year from today? How many more clients do you want to sign on? How much money do you want to make? If you haven’t started thinking about your sales goals, you’re likely to be in the same place this time next year.
The definition of a goal is “a dream with a plan and a deadline.” We’re always hearing about creating goals, yet the majority of our adult society does not even set goals in writing. The most common reasons people don’t reach their goals are they fail to write them down, fail to make a plan, and fail to take action. Without knowing where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, you’ll never reach your goal destination.
Here are (9) steps that will help you achieve all your goals and dreams:
- Create your S.M.A.R.T. goals for the year. Make sure your goals are vivid and specific, measurable in quantity, achievable, realistic but also a stretch, and a timeline of by when you’ll reach your goal.
- Write all the barriers you can think of that might get in the way of you achieving your goals. By writing down all the thoughts on paper, helps to diminish them.
- Select the top (3) goals you want to reach in the next (3) months from your list, and commit yourself to taking an action step every day to achieving these goals.
- Write specific action steps for each goal. An action step doesn’t have to take very long to do. It could be spending 10-15 minutes daily working towards that goal. If your goal is to sign on (4) new clients in the next (3) months, an action step could be making (10) new prospect calls each day before 9 am.
- Make a list of people who can support you in reaching your goals. They may also have goals that you can support them in reaching. People like to help, so ask them.
- Put your goals in a visible place so you can see them daily. Post them on your desk, in your car, on your bathroom mirror.
- Every day read your goals aloud. Speak your goals in the present tense, as if you’re already there. The more you say your goals aloud and to yourself, the more real they become.
- Visualize yourself having reached your goals. See yourself succeeding. How excited you’ll be when you bring in those new clients and get that bonus commission check!
- Promise yourself that you will achieve your goals. If you want this to be the year of sales breakthroughs, then it’s up to you to commit yourself emotionally, mentally and physically. Otherwise, it’s likely not to happen.
If you’re saying to yourself right now, “I have no time to do this,” then making more time in your life should be one of your first goals of the year!
Assignment
- Create your goals for the year using the S.M.A.R.T. system.
- Write a list of any barriers you think might get in the way of you achieving your goals.
- Select (3) goals you want to achieve in the next (3) months.
- Write specific actions steps for each of your (3) goals.
- Make a list of people who can support you in reaching your goals. Call and ask them. Then set up weekly support calls.
- Put your goals in a visible place so you can see them daily.
- Every day read your goals aloud in the present tense.
- Every day visualize yourself having reached your goals.
- Every day commit yourself to achieving your goals.
(c) All Rights Reserved.
If you would like to use this article on your website, or for your own ezine, not a problem; however, there’s one thing you MUST include: Rochelle Togo-Figa, The Sales Breakthrough Expert, is the creator of the Sales Breakthrough System(TM), a proven step-by-step sales process that will help you close more sales, sign on more clients and make more money with ease and velocity. To sign up for her free sales articles and teleclasses on closing more sales, visit http://www.SalesBreakthroughs.com.
Are you content with sitting back and being someone elses
affiliate forever? If you are then read no further my friend,
this ones not for you. But if you are not satisfied with
promoting products and services owned by others as the sole
means of generating revenue from your online business then you
are going to love this article. To really succeed online you
must be in control of a product or service, you must be the
owner of a product or service that is in high demand. If you are
open to the idea of mastering your destiny, I will show you how
to turn an idea into a goldmine and give you the blueprints for
following through on this plan. If you are scared to create your
own products, don’t be. You have limitless potential to turn
your ideas into bankable and credible products that can give you
the freedom that you desire (at least I assume you desire
freedom, if not then substitute income, free time, ego massage,
whatever you like). When you consider creating a product, you
must understand one very important point: Sell people what they
want, not what they need!!! Read that again if you have to.
People don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want. How
many times have your needs gone unmet because you bought
something you wanted instead? With that said, how do you know
what products your audience wants? Ask them! You need to
implement some market research to determine the kinds of
products your audience is interested in. Surveys and web polls
are the easiest tools to use to gather the data you need to
understand the wants of your target market. Set up a survey or
poll on your site or in your newsletter, offer your market
different options and ideas, query them for their opinions. When
you have received anywhere from 50 to 100 responses you are
ready to do some work and find out what the majority of your
respondents want to buy and then you create it! That is
important point number 2: Don’t create your product UNTIL you
know your market wants it. Once you know your product is wanted,
you need to decide what format to create it in. You can write an
information product and put it in ebook format. This is quite a
popular option but don’t overlook some of the many ways your
product can be created: Many people have used audio to create
fantastic information products. This also adds to the perceived
value of such products. Perceived value is how much people think
your product is worth based on the contents of the product.
Statistics show that if a product contains audiotapes and
videotapes it can sell for a much higher price than a manual
because people perceive that it is more valuable. Whether this
is true or not is really a moot point, the fact remains that
people will pay a higher price for such products. This is
important point #3: People will pay a higher price if they
perceive one product is more valuable than another (ie an
information report may sell for $19.95 while a report, 2 videos
and 4 cdroms can sell for close to 300 dollars). To create and
deliver audio products on the internet, you could utilize tools
available to you online to create downloadable audio files that
your customers could access instantly. There is a tool known as
Real Audio which has not been used to it’s full potential yet.
You could use this tool available from www.real.com and offer
your audio information immediately so that when customers buy
your product, they can instantly access it. This is key, and the
future of product development and delivery on the web will be
centered around digital fulfillment of information products.
When your customers can “hear” the information that they seek in
minutes instead of days or weeks, this will cause a serious
sales explosion for you. That is important point number 4: The
faster you can deliver your product into the hands of your
customer the better your chances of making the sale. Another
tool that has been used to avoid writing and assist in creating
greater perceived value is video. For many years, great product
developers have used video to demonstrate “How To” information
and to offer more visual and audio cues to their customers.
Translated to the web, you can also use Real Video (the
counterpart to Real Audio) or Vivo Player to transfer your video
content to the net. The concept remains the same, you find a
want, you create the product and then you offer instantaneous
access over the web. Your target market will eat this up. Try to
be different from what your competition is selling. If everyone
is selling ebooks on how to market on the net, it is going to be
very difficult for you to compete. However, if you can use some
of the tools above (or others such as Macromedia Flash) to
demonstrate EXACTLY HOW TO do what everyone else is just talking
about, then you stand a greater chance of being noticed and
getting the sale! Now that you have your own product to sell,
you can start your own affiliate program and market your product
using the power of other people. I am not saying to give up on
affiliate programs by any means, they can be an excellent
revenue source for your business, but the real money comes from
controlling a product. When you control the product, you control
your destiny.
Facilitating the buying process can be very straightforward and fairly uncomplicated. Yet most professionals have no idea what it takes to guide a potential client through a decision making process. They are completely lost when it comes to effective follow-up and unsure how to best get prospects to take the “next step”.
If they are lucky to get to a face-to-face meeting, they “show-up and throw-up.” They spew all there is to know about their product or service and leave the meeting hoping for a favorable decision sometime in the near future.
Their follow-up consists of a few phone-calls that go somewhat like this: “Hi, remember me? We met last week? Anyway, I just wanted to know if you’ve made a decision yet? No? Oh, OK, I’ll call again…” Soon they discover their prospect got stuck in a “12-month meeting” (every time they call over the next 12 months the prospect is in a meeting). Sounds familiar?
What’s missing is clear, consistent and easy to duplicate sales process. In a nutshell sales process is a sequence of steps that predictably moves potential clients along the decision-making path.
While your unique process will be based on the type of product or service you are selling and who the buyer is, here is a simple five step model that’s guaranteed to help you close more deals.
STEP ONE: Generate Leads
The number one reason most promotional efforts don’t get the desired results is trying to make a sale too soon. Advertising should be designed to generate leads - inquiries about your product or service from qualified prospects - not to get an order!
Generating leads is relatively easy - there are hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to get potential clients to contact you. Speaking, publishing articles, referral systems, press releases, internet marketing, networking, print ads and direct mail are just a few ways that work well for attracting prospects interested in your professional services.
STEP TWO: Pre-qualify Prospects
Your promotional efforts are bound to create some responses from tire-kickers. Unless you have unlimited resources (namely money and time) to follow-up with people that will never make a purchase or create a referral - you want to eliminate the least ideal “prospects” right from the get-go.
The best way to separate lookie-loos from genuine prospects is to ask them to invest a small amount of effort or money before they can receive more information. Have prospects fill-out a short questionnaire or request a small fee to cover your expenses of giving them additional information and only the serious candidates will move to the next step.
STEP THREE: Send Positioning Materials
Depending on how you generated the lead in the first place you may need to send out “fulfillment package” - the information promised in your advertising efforts.
You can’t give someone a “test drive” of your service - but you can illustrate your expertise through the materials you send out. White papers, special reports, articles, audio CDs and videos can give prospects a good insight into your level of expertise and “whet their appetites” - compelling them to ask how you can help them.
This is a critical step but professionals often skip it altogether. I recommend that you never meet with a prospect unless he or she had a chance to read a special report or an article you wrote, listen to an audio-program you created, participated in a teleclass you facilitated, or had a chance to “experience you” in some other form.
This gives you a chance to demonstrate your understanding of their problems, prove that you have the know-how needed to provide an effective solution, and position you as the expert who will not waste their time.
STEP FOUR: Get an Appointment
If you’ve done a good job in the first three steps - this will be easy. Your best prospects will actually look forward to meeting with you and exploring ways you can help them.
While scheduling an appointment you can further qualify the prospect’s level of interest and determine if you want to invest your time in getting together with them. However, avoid the pitfall of giving away too much information at this point. Remember your goal as this point is just to get the prospect to meet with you.
STEP FIVE: Face-to-Face Meeting
The content of your in-person meeting depends on the service or product you are selling and your target market. It could be a simple consultation that results in closing the sale or an elaborate presentation designed to moved the prospect to the next step in the process - like an “exploration meeting” with the purchasing committee or an “in-depth needs assessment”.
This is obviously a simplified model, but it identifies the five critical elements of the selling process. There are countless variations and tactics you could employ in each step, but each of those elements has only one objective - to move prospect to the next step!
(c) 2004 Adam M. Urbanski
The Author, Adam Urbanski, The Marketing Mentor, helps Service Professionals and Small Business Owners attract more clients. For more free tutorial articles, hot how-to tips and a FREE 32-page marketing guide go to http://www.themarketingmentors.com
In any major sale, a prospect makes a predictable series of buying decisions that lead up to the final purchasing decision. The first and most important of these is: “Do I ‘buy’ the salesperson?” This decision is always made before the prospect will seriously consider other factors such as product features or price.
Most salespeople devote the majority of their selling time to “pitching” their products or services. Here’s the problem: Whether prospects realize it or not, the first thing they decide is whether they like and trust you. If you bury your prospect beneath a mountain of product features while they are making the salesperson decision, you’re probably in deep trouble.
If prospects make the salesperson decision while you’re droning on about product features, their answer will be “No!” When prospects like and trust you, everything else about the sales process becomes much easier. So how can you sell yourself better? Here are a few ideas:
Demonstrate your interest. Quit trying so hard to be interesting. Be interested instead. Ask questions to learn about the prospect. Don’t talk too much about yourself.
Show that you understand. People have a strong need to feel understood. Ask questions, listen and make sure you understand your prospect’s needs. Restate the prospect’s needs so they know you understand.
Use an organized procedure for sales calls. Action Selling’s step-by-step sales skill procedure keeps you on track and helps you appear methodical, thorough and professional. Your professional approach will sell you.
Prospects ‘buy’ the salesperson during every sales call - or they don’t. The other buying decisions the prospect makes are far more likely to go in your favor when you are effective at selling yourself.
In The Field:
Equity Corporate Housing of Chicago, a division of the largest owner of apartments in the United States, trained and certified their sales groups and executive team on the Action Selling process in 2002. Outstanding results followed, beginning with a 13.5% increase in apartment rentals in the first six months after the training.
But why did Equity choose Action Selling Sales Training in the first place? Because Equity’s regional sales manager first ‘bought’ the salesperson. “The Sales Board training consultant we worked with was outstanding,” she said. “He asked all the right questions and was flexible with what he had to offer. We trusted him and he was honest with us. His knowledge and understanding of our situation was a major reason why we chose Action Selling. He used Action Selling.”
Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople in the system and skills of Action Selling. He has personally facilitated more than 300 Action Selling training sessions.
In a 30-year career as a salesperson and sales manager, Duane has sold products ranging from office equipment to insurance. He was the top salesperson at every company he ever worked for. He developed Action Selling Sales Training while owner of one of the largest computer marketers in the United States. Even in the roaring computer business of the 1980’s, his company grew six times faster than the industry norm, differentiating itself not by the products offered but by the way it sold them. Duane founded The Sales Board in 1990 to teach the skills of Action Selling to others.
Contact The Sales Board for more sales information or sales training that’s been documented and research-proven to help you sell more! 1-800-232-3485
Does your business run on a sales engine or a sales effort? A sales effort is something that has to be done every time you want to make a sale. But, a sales engine is something that, once put into place, can bring you sale after sale without added effort. Here are a couple of examples …
A photographer gets to know a handful of bridal consultants that refer every new bride they meet to him. Each time they get a new client, he has the opportunity to get a phone call from that bride without having lifted a finger.
A home cleaning company establishes a relationship with organizations that provide temporary corporate housing for companies with newly relocated employees. The temporary housing companies contact the cleaning company each time they have a person vacate one of their units so they can prepare it for the next resident. Since the nature of the residences is temporary, they have a continual need for cleaning services.
In both of these examples, instead of spending valuable (potentially billable) work time on marketing, these companies are earning money. And during the time they do spend on marketing, they are focused on developing long-term relationships with sources of continual referral instead of tracking down each individual purchaser.
In the cleaning company example, they could be running classified ads, taking calls, visiting individual homes to provide cleaning estimates, etc. But all that effort only results in one job. There is an opportunity to clean each temporary residence 3-4 times per year. Multiply that figure by the number of units the temporary housing company manages, and you’ve got some regular business rolling in. And all from one relationship. Now, that’s a sales engine!
In the case of the photographer, the service is not being performed for the bridal consultants. It’s being performed for their clients. So, rather than being a repeat-service relationship, it is a referral relationship. However, it is not reciprocal. By the time the photographer hears from brides, they have already started planning the other elements of their wedding, so it’s too late to refer them to the bridal consultants he knows. But, he could reward the bridal consultants with a referral fee that he creates by either discounting his services when dealing with those brides they refer to him or by marking his services up by 15%.
Despite all the stories you hear, most business owners are honest people who have the desire to treat their customers fairly. In the case of the photographer, the bridal consultants provide the brides with a list of photographers that they can choose from. This allows the bride to make her own decision based on quality/price rather than being pushed into a relationship with a particular photographer.
Would you prefer to invest your time in building a relationship that brings you sale after sale or one that brings you a one-shot sale? It’s not magic. It’s not a get-rich quick scheme. It’s a simple key to business success.
So, the question is .. are you going to spend this afternoon pitching one account that could lead to one job or building a relationship that could lead to several jobs? Don’t get me wrong — it can take more than an afternoon to establish the most ideal relationships. But, in more cases than not, it’s no more difficult to form this one relationship than it is to form any other.
Start your sales engine!
About The Author
Kimberly Stevens is the author of the ebook series, *The Profitable Business Owner: A Step-by-Step System for Starting & Running a Successful Service Business*. Download Sample Chapters & get her free MiniCourse, *The 10 Most Common Mistakes Business Owners Make & How To Avoid Them* at: http://www.askthebizcoach.com/ebooks.htm
kim@askthebizcoach.com
Wholesale distributors involved with a dealer channel that serves the end user have unique challenges in sales management. Ideally, this dealer channel should be strongly aligned with their wholesale distributors. That means a sharing of common goals and objectives with accountability on both sides of the equation. Dealers are not customers. They should be treated as channel partners. That means the wholesale distributor must focus on what the dealer is selling and not what they are buying.
Effective sales management in this channel includes planning sales growth, executing account strategies and using objective feedback to continuously improve performance and drive accountability. Maximizing success and profitability creates the necessity to manage this channel as a single integrated being. This means an effective sales process and structure must be in place which includes metrics, training and resources to support and improve sales performance for both the distributor and the dealer.
Effective sales management is not rocket science: “You measure results but you manage the activities that create those results.” Although the transition from activities to results can be almost immediate in demand fulfillment activities, it can become an extended period for demand creation and account development. Consequently, managing results is like closing the barn door after the horses are out of the barn. It’s just too late. The results you measure today are often created by activities that took place weeks and even months previously. To effectively manage sales in the dealer channel, it is imperative to define the specific activities necessary to drive results. By then managing those activities, success becomes much easier to achieve.
The key components of this sales management process are as follows:
Targeting
TOAD
Scorecard
Tool kit
Targeting should become a critically important sales practice for dealers and distributors - the difference between demand fulfillment and strategic demand creation, proactive selling. This is the process of selecting high potential accounts, developing penetration plans for each, and turning potential into achievable results. Targeting becomes a driving force for call planning and time management, as dealer sales people shift their focus to increasing market share by improving share of customer spend and new account generation. Today’s customer is much smarter and better educated than they were in the 90’s. Sales representatives must understand their customers’ needs, find their pain and practice solution selling.
The Territory Opportunity Action-planning Discussion (TOAD) is the most important element in the process. It is the platform that creates timely feedback and a focus on meeting objectives. Sales managers should center these monthly discussions around performance improvement, coaching on best practices and providing support to the sales team.
A scorecard supports accountability and alignment throughout the network. It is a diagnostic tool and a motivator. It should include both results measurements (e.g. revenue, gross profit and market share growth) and supporting activity measurements (e.g. targeting activities, program compliance, training participation).
The tool kit is a library of best practice guidelines, reference material and other resources that anyone in the enterprise can peruse at his own convenience. The contents could include manuals, safety sheets, call budgeting, planning tools and account penetration strategy guidelines, etc.
As today’s sales environment leans toward a more multifaceted atmosphere, salespeople must become strategists with a plan. This plan requires more knowledge about the business, better relationships and better solutions. Once you accumulated this knowledge, utilize it. Develop your penetration strategy around the customer’s pains. What challenges do they face on a day to day basis? How do they make money? Where can you provide value, increase their ability to make profit. (This does not include price reductions). Employ all the resources in your company that are necessary to accomplish your growth objectives.
http://www.ceostrategist.com Dr. Rick Johnson (rick@ceostrategist.com) is the founder of CEO Strategist LLC, an experienced based firm specializing in leadership, strategic planning and the creation of competitive advantage in wholesale distribution. CEO Strategist LLC. works in an advisory capacity with distributor executives in board representation, executive coaching, team coaching and education and training to make the changes necessary to create or maintain competitive advantage. You can contact them by calling 352-750-0868, or visit http://www.ceostrategist.com for more information. CEO Strategist - experts in Strategic Leadership in Wholesale Distribution. Sign up for Rick’s monthly news letter - “The Howl” email rick@ceostrategist.com.
One saying seems to be appropriate in my business life and it
starts with, “if I had only… “It seems that hind sight is
truly 20/20. But when I think of all the decisions I should have
made or the actions I should have taken one fact stands out very
clear. I knew what I should have done; I simply didn’t do it!
There are many good reasons why we don’t do the things we know
we should. For example, when the doctor told me for the 5th year
in a row that my cholesterol was too high, I once again assured
him that I would start exercising and watching my diet.
About two weeks later I was at a meeting and during one of the
breaks a friend said that his neighbor had dropped dead of a
heart attack while taking a shower the day before, he was only
37. The next day I was talking to another friend, who said that
one of the men in his company had died of a heart attack over
the previous weekend, he was 35!
I was 47 at the time and started thinking, “If I had only
started that exercise program and diet control 5 years ago when
the doctor had first warned me, I wouldn’t be so worried right
now.” So I did, better later than never. (I had a good excuse
however, we were out of the country for 32 weeks one year and
everyone knows how hard it is to diet and exercise when you are
traveling. If I had died, they would probably have said, “If he
had only taken the doctor’s advice and watched his diet and
exercised…”) When I started sharing that story with a friend
one day the conversation immediately shifted to a discussion
about our experiences in sales.
For all of the training that we do in the art of Prospecting, I
am one of the best examples of the guy, who says, “If I had
only…”
You see, I have the same problem most sales professionals have.
That is the tendency to let other activities interrupt my
prospecting. The result is I often get to the point of where my
other activities start to run out and I realize that “if I had
only” kept up the prospecting, I would be comfortably busy, not
scrambling for more business.
It is really amazing how often we let the more comfortable
activities take precedence over the less comfortable, even
though we know that we will suffer for it in the future.
Knowing this I have tried to develop a system to prevent it from
happening to me and, being a sales trainer, I want to share it
with other sales professionals.
Business got slow for us a few months ago, because I had slacked
off a few months before that. (Just like I had told the doctor
for 5 years, I will do something about it, but really didn’t).
So I simply began to use our system called Statistical
“Prospecting” ControlTM (S”P”C). With S”P”C you simply determine
how many people you need to contact each week in order to
achieve your new customer goals, and then just do it. Sounds
pretty simple and it is. But it does require some organization
and control.
We at least have all of the organization needs in our company;
the control is where I over extended. My problem was a tendency
to be overzealous. I figured that since I developed the system
for prospecting, therefore I should be able to use it most
effectively. So I decided I would make 10 prospecting calls a
day, to new prospects I had never talked with before. That is 50
a week. I was doing this strictly by telephone.
Well sure enough, the volume of activity I created very quickly
overwhelmed my ability to follow up and I had to cut back after
two weeks. I suppose I should read our own book where we talk
about not over doing it, but simply doing a constant number of
prospecting calls every week, week after week.
The conclusion is simple, regardless of how you feel, do the
things you know you need to do. Pre-empt having to say “if I had
only…” Because we all know that your future is dependent on
your present.
Sell Well and Often
Bill Truax Bill@BlitzCall.com
© Copyright 2006 WJ Truax
This time of year many business people are looking ahead to next year with optimism and determination to make record revenue targets. It’s as if by turning the calendar from December to January somehow all things will be great and obstacles that seem too big this year will magically disappear. Well if this year didn’t quite match up to the expectations, intentions and well wishes for a great 2005, here are 5 tips that will help you develop opportunities for your sales force.
Define the meaning of the word “lead”. Take your best sales reps and clearly define the definition of a qualified lead. What types of companies should you go after? Who should your sales team be making appointments with? Should you target the names by title or function or both? What are their most common business pains? In other words, make it so that your sales force can pick out a prospect in a line-up if they had to.
Determine the right amount of leads per sales rep. More leads aren’t necessarily better. Sales reps have to divide their day into current customer demands, administrative tasks, and prospecting. The more a sales rep is stretched, the less effective they become. Make sure you create a system that puts the rep in front of only the best prospects so that they have more quality time to sell as opposed to following up on dead-end leads that only waste the rep’s time.
Determine your impact message. Time is money and your messages must be developed with the greatest impact for the task at hand. Think about every, yes every step, in your sales process. Complex sales can take a long time to develop. That’s why each and every touch point of the process should be selling the next step in your sales process. From advertisements, to the web site, from the sales letters down to the first phone call, each one of these should have a specific impact message.
Qualify the lead. Most companies don’t qualify the leads well. That’s why after a while most reps don’t jump on a lead given to them by the marketing department. There is an inherent problem with measuring both the marketing and sales departments by numbers. Marketing needs to justify its existence so any old person that fills out a web form or responds to an ad gets tagged as a lead. And sales needs to justify the number of calls, appointments etc. so they are constantly trying to close. Both departments don’t determine the stage of the buying cycle that the prospect is at until it’s too late. Both departments lose - marketing really didn’t have a hot lead as the reps thought, and sales gets discouraged because they want ready and willing buyers right now.
• Make sure your lead is a decision maker or strong influencer.
• The budget is available or the person can make it available.
• Your solution will solve their pain.
• They have expressed a real interest to explore a solution to their need right now.
Conduct a task commitment cost/benefit study. Direct selling is costly. Most studies show that face-to-face B2B sales calls are in the neighborhood of $500 or more. That’s why most companies make their highly paid sales team make cold calls. Determine if it’s in the best interests of your revenues and profits to have this kind of business model. If 90% of your revenues come from of a sales rep’s face-to-face selling time - 10% of their week is literally asking for the sale - wouldn’t you want them spending more quality sales time with their prospects?
• What’s the best use of the sales rep’s time?
• Who should cold call?
• Who should nurture leads?
• Should you create an internal call center or hire a Business Process Outsourcing firm?
• Will sales reps blow the sale by always trying to close, close, close the prospect during the formative lead nurturing cycle?
By taking the time to qualify your leads; and assign the appropriate team at each stage of the game, you will find your company in a better position to catch more prospects at the time that they want to buy.
David Wells is a business development expert, speaker, trainer, consultant and founder of http://www.emdco.com a provider of business-to-business lead creation, data confirmation and integrated marketing solutions.
A few months ago I spent time training some telephone sales
agents who were new to selling. They’d mainly been involved
with handling incoming calls but now their company needed
them to do some out bound sales calls. I spent two days
running a sales workshop for them and another three days
coaching them on the job.
The biggest challenge I had was trying to stop them selling.
Or at least their idea of what selling is all about.
Many people who are new to sales and also some experienced
sales people want to keep talking about their product or
service. They open the conversation with one or two general
questions which are often irrelevant to the customer and
then launch into their sales spiel.
What then happens is that the customer thinks “Oh no, I’m
being sold to” and immediately disengages the brain and
stops listening. The sales person then has limited success
as far as getting a sale is concerned.
My job with these people was to try to get them to stop
selling as they knew it. The most important thing in any
sales call is to find out what the customer’s needs are. The
customer won’t readily tell you what his or her real needs
are so the sales person needs to do some careful probing.
Questions need to be asked that are relevant to the
customer’s needs and relevant to your product or service.
It is often useful to open an outbound sales call with the
question “Mr Customer I’m not sure whether we can help you
or not, however I would like to ask one or two questions
which will establish whether our product would meet your
needs and benefit your business, is that OK?”
This statement is perfectly true because, you don’t know if
your product or service will benefit the customer until you
ask him or her some questions about their business. It will
also have the effect of relaxing the customer if they feel
they’re not being sold to and that someone is interested and
cares about their situation. If the customer believes this
then closing the sale becomes so much easier.
Discover how you can generate more business without having
to cold call!
Alan Fairweather is the author of “How to get More Sales
without Selling” This book is packed with practical things
that you can do to - get customers to come to you.
Click here now:
http://www.howtogetmoresales.com
http://www.alanfairweather.com
1. Supersize It!
Okay, okay… the real marketing term here us upsell it, but the word association takes me to McDonalds. You’ve been there… you pull up to the window, place your order and they always say… “Would you like to supersize that?”
What bugs me is that I instinctively say, “Yes!” After all, for a few cents more I’m getting nearly twice the amount of fries and beverage. We won’t discuss the fact that a person with normal size kidneys couldn’t possible drink the supersized drink before it goes flat… and that if I were to eat all of the supersized fries I’d be perfect advertisment for an acne medicine company… but hey, I got a good deal!
When your customers have their wallet out and are reaching for their money, they are ripe for shelling out just a few more bucks to sweeten the deal. In fact, about 50 percent will say yes without a second thought. It’s the perfect time to offer an upgrade or an extra warranty.
2. After The Sale Offers.
Have you noticed that novel sequels seem to go like hotcakes? Once the author has caught the audiences attention with the first book, they can’t wait to get their hands on the follow up.
The same idea carries over with your customers. A customer who is happy with the product and service you provided the first time, is much more open for a second experience.
The backend product you offer doesn’t even have to be your own. Affiliate marketers are rolling in proceeds on ebooks that cover material associated with their products. It’s an easy and painless process to market this way… the affiliate handles all the sales, while you collect the commission.
3. Reward Referrals
Customer surveys that ask 3 basic questions: What did you like best about the product?, How can we improve the value of the product?, and Who do you know that would benefit from the product?
In a nutshell, you are letting the customer know that his needs and opinions are important to you, and that you want to help someone else fulfill their needs too. You’ll gain valuable insight into customer satsifaction, provide material for valuable testimonials, and get tips on potential customers.
Upselling, backend selling and referral selling work together to increase the number of sales you net, without increasing advertizing budgets. Try it… you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to increase your marketing effectiveness within your current customer audience.
Copyright 2006 Cutts Group, llc
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Who is Allyn Cutts, and why should you care?
Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers. Allyn is a marketing and sales fanatic, providing measurable marketing solutions that drive huge results for small-to mid-size business clients. Allyn works personally with clients to design and deliver off-line and on-line direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results.
You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://www.AllynCutts.com and you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays.
