Posts from — January 2006

Three Keys To Building Relationships
Top sales professionals see themselves as “Doctors of Selling.” They see themselves as professionals, well educated, acting in their “patient’s” best interest, and bound by a high code of ethics.

The medical process is the same everywhere. Whenever you go to any doctor, of any kind, for any condition, he will follow the three part sequence of examination, diagnosis and prescription.

Begin With A Thorough Examination
Just as a medical professional would never think of treating you without following these three steps in order, you as a doctor of selling, would never allow a customer to force you to sell without your going through your three stages as well. This is as applicable to selling magazines door-to-door as it is to selling oil tankers to Exxon.

Offering free samples increases the Know-Like-and-Trust Factor that makes people buy. When you are selling a service, or a product with a high service component, potential customers have no way to see, feel, or taste what you will actually deliver. Providing a sample makes your service offering tangible, and builds your customer’s trust.

But if you’re not careful, you can give away too much. Why should customers pay for what they can get for free? And if you give those freebies to unqualified buyers, you may find yourself spending too much time and money on prospects who will never become paying customers.

The Perennial Secret To Sales Success

The absolute single most important determinant to selling success is your ability to establish written goals for your life and your business. Before you shrug this off too easily, consider this.

During the last 17 years I have worked with 62,835 salespeople. Whenever I’m talking about the importance of goals, which is almost always, I ask two questions. The first one is – how many of you have goals? The second is, if you have goals, are they in writing?

Sales people who have clear objectives, the required competencies, and a supportive working environment still require a level of desire, willingness and positive thinking to complete tasks or sales activities in order to optimize performance. This state of willingness could be restated as motivation, the mental game or the internal forces that affect the outcomes, intensity and perseverance of a sales person’s voluntary behavior.  Read more...

I was recently consulting with a very large, multinational firm. In their own heart of hearts – and, in their boardroom – they believed that they had a sales problem. And they do. However, the sales problem is merely symptomatic of a number of deeper issues that need to be addressed before any serious improvement can be made in their sales results.

This scenario, however, is not rare. And it makes no difference whether the organization is large (this client sells $2.6 billion in the U.S. alone) or small, a “ma-pop,” small business or entrepreneurial environment. These situations exist in all organizations. No matter the size. What is believed to be the problem is merely a symptom of a series of deeper, more endemic challenges.  Read more...

All the top salespeople ask good questions and listen carefully to the answers. One of the most important skills of listening is simply to pause before replying. When the prospect finishes talking, rather than jumping in with the first thing that you can think of, take three to five seconds to pause quietly and wait.

Becoming a Master of The Pause
All excellent listeners are masters of the pause. They are comfortable with silences. When the other person finishes speaking, they take a breath, relax and smile before saying anything. They know that the pause is a key part of good communications.  Read more...

Remembering a customer’s name can improve your sales. However, people in my workshops often tell me that they have a difficult time remembering names. I sometimes think we tend to get too hung up on trying to recall a person’s name, especially if we have only met them once.

Like anything else mental, the harder you try to remember someone’s name, the more it will elude you. However, there are a few things you can do that will help…

In golf, there is a saying that, “You drive for show, but you putt for dough.” In selling, you prospect and present for show, but you overcome customer skepticism and gain commitment for dough. Your ability to answer objections and get the sale is the true test of how good you really are as a salesperson.

The True Test of Selling
This is perhaps the most stressful and challenging part of the sales process. It’s where the rubber meets the road. It is your ability to answer the questions that the prospect puts to you and overcome his natural reluctance to make a commitment that wraps up the sales process. It is also the part of the sales process that salespeople dislike the most and which customers find the most stressful.

Salespeople are always on the lookout for tips that can help them be more successful. There is certainly no shortage of information in the form of articles, books, tapes and classes designed to help you succeed. Over 20 years working with professionals in sports/business/sales I’ve learned that all performance can be broken into 3 distinct and simple components. I call this the “A.S.K.” model and it consists of:

1. A-ttitude
2. S-kill
3. K-nowledge  Read more...