Posts from — May 2006

If you’re working hard, but aren’t consistently generating enough sales and getting referrals, chances are it’s a matter of trust. One of the most critically important and yet frequently overlooked aspects of selling is creating a solid foundation of trust and rapport.

Suppose you could incorporate a few simple, yet highly effective ideas into your selling process and substantially increase your bottom line?

Successful salespeople have a knack for making people feel important. They understand the value of building trust and rapport early on in the selling process. For you see, it really doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about your product line or how many closing techniques you have mastered, unless you earn your prospect’s trust and confidence you’re not going to make the sale period.  Read more...

One is a very tiny number. However, it can have a tremendous impact on your revenues. Here are some ideas to consider:

* Make one more cold call every day. One extra call a day equals 260 calls in a year. How many meetings could you set up with this number of calls and how many of those meetings could you turn into sales? Consider your current conversion ratio and think of the impact on your business.  Read more...

1. Prospecting breeds activity. Regardless of the number of existing customers you happen to have, prospecting is basic to selling. It’s not always the potential for new business that makes prospecting such an important activity, but the competitive information you are able to collect in the process.

As you prospect, keep your eyes open for new and innovative ideas that are working for the prospect. You never know what useful idea you’ll stumble across when visiting a prospect you’re unfamiliar with. It may be a new technique he or she is using, an innovative method of marketing or a new product application. If it’s working for one of your prospects, odds are it will work for your customers, too.  Read more...

The majority of people in the sales force spend an average of no more than two hours out of their day actually selling.

This fact is astonishing for two reasons. One, how do we as sales people manage to meet our goals. And two, why on earth are we in sales to begin with?

The lack of hours spent selling in our work week is understandable. Lets face it. The paperwork alone can take up half of your day. Not to mention the phone calls, the problem solving, putting out fires, etc.  Read more...

I hope it has been some time since you last had a dead battery. It’s not a lot of fun, especially if it is pouring rain and you don’t have a set of jumper cables.

Most people know a battery has a positive and a negative terminal. When jump-starting a car it is very important to know which is which. If you don’t connect the negative terminal on one battery to the negative on the other, and then do the same with the positive connections, one can do serious damage to the battery and alternator.  Read more...

In 1957, Earl Nightingale, speaker, author and co founder of the Nightingale-Conant Corporation, recorded his classic motivational record “The Strangest Secret.” “The Strangest Secret” sold over one million copies and made history in the recording industry by being honored as the first Gold Record for the spoken word.

Nightingale, known as the “dean of personal development,” concluded that life’s “strangest secret” is that we become what we think about all day long.  Read more...

Lets say I want to buy a nail from you, will you ask me why? Or, will you take my order and sell me what I think I need? Will you give me a demonstration on why your nails are superior to the competition? Or, will you ask me questions on how I will use the nails?

One reason people fail in sales is a strong belief they must sell their product or service to everyone. I met someone who held this strong belief this weekend when he said “everyone is a potential customer”. This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this. I worked in an industry where this belief was part of its culture. The sales strategy was to focus on presenting features and benefits.  Read more...

I was browsing the latest toys in the computer department at Best Buy, while also eavesdropping on the sales attempts by the staff. Interesting, indeed.

A middle-aged fellow with his young son were quizzically poking at various machines. The dad had the “deer in the headlights” look. Son kept saying, “Dad, we need somethun that goes fast!” Finally accosted by a salesperson, the dad explained he’d like something that “Goes fast.”

The blue-vested clerk pointed to a machine and said, “Pentium three, 600 megahertz, 27 gigs of hard drive, 128 meg DRAM, 8 meg video memory, 512K level 2 cache. It screams, dude.”  Read more...