Greatest Sales Strategy Ever By Jon Gordon

As a student of people and ideas I had to admit that what two guys are doing in a Northeast Florida Starbucks is absolutely genius.

The other day as I tried to pay for my green tea at my local Starbucks the cashier said, “Don’t worry about it sir.

Those guys over there are paying for it today.” She then handed me their business card from a stack by the register.

Turns out the guys were wealth management, financial planners who once a week, at different times, will spend a few hours at this Starbucks and buy customers their coffee.

Most people, like me, will walk over and thank the gentlemen and walk away with their business card in our pocket.

I thought about how brilliant this was. People love their Starbucks in the morning. While they are waiting in line they smell that aroma and think, “Yes, there is a God for only God could make something that smells so good.”

For many the Starbucks experience has become a ritual or right of passage that helps them take on the day. It’s become an emotional experience that makes them feel good. It’s become a bond of love.

Imagine yourself at the register, which is very easy for many of us, as you anticipate holding that coffee in your hand, thinking “YES”. Then the cashier tells you it’s FREE. Wow, an unexpected gift. Now instead of feeling good you are feeling great.

You feel so good you don’t mind placing a stranger’s card in your pocket. When you walk over and say thank you to these financial planners they cease to be strangers and become more like acquaintances and neighbors. Then about an hour later when the caffeine really kicks in you’re feeling so great, you think, “Wow, those financial planners are great guys.”

Now instead of acquaintances they have become more like long lost friends. These financial planners brilliantly connected something you love with a service they offer.

Not surprisingly I found out that these men do receive a good number of calls from the Starbucks customers interested in planning for their financial future.

It is said we remember one third of what we read, half of what people tell us and 100 % how feel. Whether we are watching a commercial, listening to a teacher, or talking to a sales person it is how we feel that impacts us the most.

We can’t remember what we ate for lunch a week ago but we can remember where we were on 9-11 when we saw the World Trade towers collapse. We remember how we feel and when it comes time to investing our money, buying a product, purchasing insurance, or choosing a restaurant and we will make choices based on these feelings.

This leads us to the greatest sales strategy ever—but it doesn’t involve coffee. While the Starbucks idea is brilliant it isn’t the best way to build a business.

There is a far more powerful strategy to create an emotional connection and foster and emotional memory. It’s so simple and it doesn’t even cost a dime. It’s to love your customers. Caffeine is temporary but love lasts forever.

Love and business are two words you usually don’t here in the same sentence but when it comes to sales, customers do business with people they like and who love and care about them.

When customers feel like they matter and feel cared for they love back with more loyalty, more business and more referrals.

So if you are in sales, and we all are, I encourage you to make loving and caring about your customers your top priority. You don’t have to buy them coffee to connect your product or service with something they love. You can be the connection. Your love can be the bridge that connects your customer with your product or service.

After all no matter what we are selling, people are always buying our energy and making decisions based on how our energy makes them feel. And while coffee is an energy source that makes people feel good it doesn’t compare to the energy of love.

Look out for your customers interests. Show them you care. Share the love and you’ll be so successful you’ll be able to buy your own Starbucks and give away all the coffee you want.
______________
Jon Gordon is a speaker, consultant and author of the international best seller The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy and The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work, & Training Camp: What the Best do Better than Everyone Else. Visit him at www.JonGordon.com

*brought to you by SalesTrainingAdvice.com

P.S. If you're looking for someone to get your sales team fired up and ready to unleash their best contact motivational speaker Josh Hinds about appearing at your next company meeting or sales rally!

The Instinct of Herding: How Sales Professionals Can Capitalize on it to Sell More. Part 1 By Skip Anderson

I spent some time with one of my friends a few weeks ago. Now retired, he had been a very successful career salesperson who sold wholesale clothing to clothing retailers. We chatted about the nature of buyers and customer psychology.

“Who Else Is Buying It?”
Dave told me how he would walk up and down Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis in decades past, calling on each of the men’s clothing stores to present his lines. Nicollet Mall (the name of a street not a shopping mall, was formerly the major retail center in the Twin Cities area. It was home to many of independent clothiers at the time. Dave called on all of them.

Dave told me that when he would show his spring collection to one of the retail buyers, the buyer would almost inevitably ask, “Who else is buying it?” (Meaning, “What other retailers have already purchased this from you?”). Dave said that, almost without fail, if other stores had purchased his merchandise, his prospect would, too.

The Influence of Others in Buying Decisions

So what was going on with those retailers? The psychology of buyers is complex. It’s not as easy as “customers buy to solve problems” or “people buy to relieve pain” or other overused clichés I read about.

One element of buying psychology is that buyers often herd together, just like a herd of cattle or a flock of geese or a school of fish. Why do they do this?

There are three major reasons why customers herd, or are highly influenced by other customers:

1. Prospects prefer not to take risks.

Although some are more risk tolerant than others, prospects prefer to avoid too much risk (however they define risk). Instead, they tend to buy tried and true products from tried and true sources in tried and true ways. This is one reason it can be challenging for a new player in an industry to be successful right out of the entrepreneurial gate.

2. Prospects believe there is safety in numbers.

If everybody is opening coffee shops on every street corner, it must be safe to open a coffee business of your own, right? And better yet, it must be better to open a coffee shop on a corner that already has a coffee shop, correct? I know of at least one urban intersection that houses three coffee shops on three of its four corners.

3. Prospects are highly influenced by others.

Even highly independent customers take cues from others and are influenced by the buying behavior of others. Belonging to a group is an important purchasing motivator. This helps to explain why one home on Park Street installed a paver driveway last summer and two more homes on Park Street will follow suit this summer.

* You can read Part 2 of this article here.
____________
Skip Anderson is a speaker, management consultant, sales trainer, writer, and the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. The creator of 3D Selling™, Skip works with companies and individuals to capitalize upon the buying potential of every prospect. He is an authority on customer engagement and B2C selling.

-What are some key ideas you took away from the ideas above & how can you use them to improve your sales results?


*brought to you by SalesTrainingAdvice.com

The Instinct of Herding: How Sales Professionals Can Capitalize on it to Sell More. Part 2 By Skip Anderson

Herd Mentality in Selling

Wouldn’t it be great if you could leverage these behaviors, which I have termed herd mentality, to help you sell more?

You can! Here are FIVE ways to use herd mentality to grow your sales revenue:

1. Let’s imagine that you’re doing a home improvement project at a customer’s home. When the project starts, send a salesperson up and down the street to door knock to find prospects. Do it again one month after the project, and again six months later. Supplement the door- knocking with a targeted direct mail campaign timed to maximize herd mentality. Customers are more likely to add a patio to their home if one or more of their neighbors recently added a patio to their home(s).

2. When you sell to someone, ask the customer to provide you with the names and contact information for their family and friends. A marketing campaign including warm-calling, direct mail, or email can help some of these customers begin to form a herd.

3. Put photos of your customers on a display wall in your retail store. Either add to the wall over time or rotate pictures onto the wall. This technique is especially effective if you include your (their) product in the photo (think sofa, refrigerator, convertible, etc.). Include the names of the customers if possible, and the city in which they live. When a shopper points at a picture and says, “Hey look, Honey, there’s Jim from the club…” you’ve got a herd beginning to form.

4. Create a buying frenzy. Let’s say you sell retail furniture, and two of your sales colleagues happen to be showing their shoppers a wall unit to house a TV. Even if your shopper is in your store to look at bedroom sets, walk buy the wall unit on the way to the bedroom sets, and as you walk buy, stop and explain to your prospect that “this particular wall unit has just been flying out of here…what do you think of it?” If you’ve successfully engaged your prospect previously, your prospect will likely answer the question, and some of your prospects will even say something like, “Wow, I love it!” Can you picture the herd forming?

5. Schedule follow-up appointments with prospects in your showroom when you have a lot of foot traffic. More activity in your showroom equals more herd potential!

6. When one house goes up for sale, you may have neighbors who have been on the fence decide to put theirs up for sale. Introduce yourself to the neighbors. Do some investigating. Then investigate some more after the house has sold.

7. At your trade show, hire one or two people to stand in your booth and talk to you when your booth is empty. When passersby see the other people at your display, herd mentality takes over and some will stop at your booth who would have otherwise passed right on by. Your stand-ins can leave and walk around for ten minutes until the next time your booth is empty. Prospects at trade show displays are more effective at generating traffic than salespeople are.

8. Create fans who are wild about you, your product, or your company. When they talk to others, others will be more likely to join your customer ranks. Host a weekly radio show with fresh content, but encourage your customers to call in and talk about their purchases of your products or services. Have social get-togethers with your customers and let them meet each other. Herd mentality starts with just two people, and can grow from there.

9. If your company does service work or installation in your customers’ homes, post a lawn sign on the property if possible. If you get three lawn signs on a block, chances are fabulous that you’ll get a fourth customer soon.

10. Have a special sale only for customers. Keep this one legitimate. Have it after hours. Everyone there will know that everyone else there is a customer. Hold drawings and festivities. Let the herd take shape. A larger herd is more likely to attract more members than a smaller herd.

11. Have a thick book of customer surveys to show your prospect (work it into your sales process if possible). These are more effective if the surveys are written in the customer’s own handwriting, and if the customer’s name and address are on the form. This doesn’t work so well with five customer surveys, but if you can provide two or three hundred, it will help you create a herd.

* You can read Part 1 of this article here.
____________
Skip Anderson is a speaker, management consultant, sales trainer, writer, and the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. The creator of 3D Selling™, Skip works with companies and individuals to capitalize upon the buying potential of every prospect. He is an authority on customer engagement and B2C selling.

*Every professional salesperson knows the importance of staying motivated -- stay inspired by reading the Motivation and Inspiration Journal of Josh Hinds.

*brought to you by SalesTrainingAdvice.com

How To Motivate Sales Teams In a Tough Economy By Mike Brooks

Sales reps have it tough today – not only are their clients and prospects harder to sell, but even their companies have pulled back a lot of the incentives they used to reward and motivate their performance.

It started back in December when many companies canceled their holiday parties and annual bonuses. Then it continued as companies announced they were not contributing to their 401K plans and that any raises or increases in commissions would be postponed as well.

As the downturn continues, it threatens to squelch employee morale throughout organizations – from the sales reps, to customer service, all
the way to accounting. With little money for standard raises and cost of living increases, many companies are rediscovering the benefits and impact that little perks can have.

Sue Shellenbarger in The Wall Street Journal reports that corporations as diverse as Discovery Communications, Intel, and USAA have rolled out such new benefits as onsite child care, concierge services, and free massages. Such perks may seem extravagant during lean times, but employers say it’s a way to keep top talent happy. “While such benefits cost relatively little, they pack a big emotional wallop.”

In fact, the most effective perks aren’t always the priciest, said Carlos Bergfeld and Princess Calabrese in BNET.com. “Studies show that cash incentives don’t stick in an employee’s mind: Most folks use the money to pay bills and later forget where it went.” Instead, L.A.-based public
relations firm JS Communications gives employees two free “I Don’t Want to Get Out of Bed” days.

Colorado’s New Belgium Brewery, best known for its flag ship Fat Tire ale, celebrates employees’ one-year anniversaries by giving them custom bicycles. “It’s a couple hundred dollars for the bike,” says the company’s media director Bryan Simpson. “But it means so much more.”

This is sound advice, and it shows the growing trend of how perks are becoming the new raise. In my previous roles as sales manager and V.P. of Sales, I understand how recognition can mean much more to a sales rep’s morale than simply a cash bonus.

Here are a few inexpensive ideas you can begin implementing immediately that will have a big impact on morale and performance:

1) Get a couple of trophies such as “Most new leads generated in a week,” or “Revenue Leader of the week.” Each Monday present the award to the sales rep who led your team in these or other areas during the previous week. Believe me this weekly recognition goes a long way in keeping moral up.

2) Buy a Blu-Ray Hi Def DVD player for the closer or employee of the month award. You can get them from Costco for $199. Buy it in advance and show it off during the month – you’ll get great mileage for just a few dollars.

3) Ask your employees to make suggestions as to the bonuses they would most like to receive. Then pick one or two and offer them for the next few months.

I’m sure you can think of other bonuses that would have an impact on your sales team and other company employees. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to keep your employees motivated, but you do have to be a little more creative. Just remember – just because you may not be able to hand out the bonuses your team is used to, it doesn’t mean you can’t still motivate them in other ways.

Put your thinking cap on and find ways that fit within your budget and let your team know how important they are. The loyalty, security, and
production you’ll create will be well worth the effort.
______________
Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps nationwide teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance. If you’re looking to catapult your sales, or create a sales team that actually makes their monthly revenues, then learn how by visiting: MrInsideSales.com

* Order your copy of Mike Brooks' Audio Program The Secrets of the Top 20% | How To Double Your Income Selling Over The Phone...


-Can you can share some other ways you've seen implemented which were helpful in motivating sales teams?

*brought to you by SalesTrainingAdvice.com