Posts from — June 2007

I was recently speaking to a friend who is in the process of selling her home. She told me about her experience interviewing a prospective realtor.

He showed up at her home, armed with a thick, glossy, color brochure about his company. He laid it out on the dining room table and for the next sixty minutes proceeded to walk her through each page of the brochure. My friend, who apparently has the patience of a saint, still gets agitated when she retells the story.  Read more...

Many organizations blame the economy when sales start to stagnate. What a timely crutch they have found. However, blaming the economy for sluggish sales makes about as much sense as thanking the economy when revenues rise. Neither option has much business merit.

All sales activity (or lack thereof) is a result of the salesperson’s efforts. Whether the economy is up or down is irrelevant. What matters is what your sales team does differently to grow their sales by 25 percent.  Read more...

Persistence is a vital skill that every sales person needs. It’s been said that most sales are made after eight contacts with a prospect. However, most people tend to give up after just three or four attempts. Let’s explore the behind-the-scene dynamics involved in a typical scenario.

Meet Mrs. Executive. Her day is booked solid, scarcely allowing her to catch her breath between each meeting. Some meetings are internal. Others are with clients and customers. And a few are with current suppliers or business partners. She has a dozen balls in the air and focuses most of her time trying to juggle them all and keep them in the air. She has several major goals she wants to accomplish this year but progress is slow because the demands on her time are non-stop.  Read more...

If you could take everything we know about communications, put it all in a large pot, boil it and distill it down into its critical essence, it is about the importance of relationships in successful selling.

Building and maintaining long-term selling relationships is the key behavior and skill of the top ten percent of the money earners in sales, in every field, selling every product and service.  Read more...

Every so often you’ll find yourself in front of a “controlling” prospect. This is a person who wants to show you who is boss (and, as far as they’re concerned, it ain’t you!) . They’ll do this by asking questions – often in rapid succession – demanding fast answers. They will also demand that you answer questions; not ask them.

Avoiding “rapid-fire.”

Although it’s often good rapport-building to converse with your prospect at the same rate of speed as they are talking, this may not be helpful in a rapid-fire situation where, as soon as you answer, they fire back another question, trying to control the pace. Often, they are doing this to throw you off your timing (a form of passive-aggressiveness).  Read more...

Call me crazy, but when someone calls me to try to sell me something, I don’t hang up on him or her. I listen and respond and then make suggestions to the caller on how to improve his or her call.

For many people, prospecting — marketing — for new clients on the telephone, “cold calling” is the job of last resort. Who wants to be cursed at, hung up on and lied to? But many of my clients are in professions where cold calling is one of their necessary methods of prospecting.  Read more...

Using email for prospecting and selling is one of the most powerful online tools a professional salesperson can have.

Unlike the passive strategy of a web site where you have to wait until someone visits your site before you can present to them, email is an active selling tool. You can compose a selling message any time and send it out to a database of prospects or your list of clients.

But don’t think you can send just any email message out to whomever you please. There are rules to this kind of contact and communication. And if you break them, you can seriously harm your credibility and reputation.  Read more...

One of the biggest challenges facing any business is keeping in balance. In many businesses, more emphasis is put on getting new business than serving existing clients. Next to sales functions, customer service functions are vital to overall success and must be given appropriate emphasis.

Poor customer service will cost a company as much business as will having a poor sales person in the field. Both can damage a company’s reputation and potential for future growth.  Read more...