This issue contains:
The Selling Quote for the Month
Upcoming Programs
The Selling Ideas for the Month
Action Items
Selling Tips
What do you think?
To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
Need an article for your newsletter?
About Maura Schreier-Fleming
Contact Information
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The
Selling Quote for the Month
“At my lemonade stand I used to
give the first glass away free and charge five dollars
for the second glass. The refill contained the
antidote.” Emo Phillips, American Comedian
While I’m not suggesting that you
poison your customers, I am suggesting you think about
what happens after your sale. There is more to think
about in selling than just making the first sale. It’s
thinking about how you can get your customer to continue
to buy. What are you doing to get your customers to come
back and buy more? Are you giving them a reason? Are you
clear about the promises you made to your customer so
you can keep them? Do your customers know all they need
to know about your products and services to realize the
value of what you sold them?
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Upcoming Programs
Program: Learn To Be Lucky
When: October 10, 11.45-1 PM
Cost: $39 includes lunch
Where: The Gates Restaurant,
Meadows Museum
Dallas, TX
For more Information: 214 SMU THINK
(214 768 8446)
Description: How lucky can you be?
Research shows that people can actually make their own
good and bad fortune, enhancing the amount of luck they
have in life. Lucky people think and do things
differently than unlucky people. Come learn from an
expert in selling how to apply “lucky” principles to
your life and experience additional luck and prosperity.
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The
Selling Ideas for this Month
False Sense of
Security
The best salespeople are concerned
about their customers’ interests. They also remember to
look out for their own interests. A customer focus
without a seller’s focus will get you one thing—no
business. I forgot this and here’s how you can avoid
what happened to me.
The beginning. I had worked on a
small project with a customer. I was looking for a
bigger project with him. Instead of a purely sales
project, his company, a $700 million real estate
company, was looking to do customer survey work. One of
my business partners does data mining work and customer
survey work. I asked my customer some questions about
the project. How did they arrive at it? What were they
considering? My contact said they wanted to learn what
their customers thought about their service offerings
since they really didn’t know. He didn’t know how they
would do the project. He also indicated no work had been
done on this project. The data mining consultant said
using the web to collect survey data is efficient and
less costly to customers. I shared this with my contact.
He thought it was a great idea and set up a meeting with
all of us, including the president of his company.
The meeting. My business partner
and I prepared our discussion questions, our meeting
objective and brought sample management reports to the
meeting. We wanted to show the customer what they could
expect from the survey results. We began the meeting by
discussing data collection using the web. The president
said, “Stop right there. We are not going to use the
web. Our customers won’t use the web.” He wanted a hard
copy system all along. Our contact never told us that.
Since our expertise was in a web based solution, we had
to move on to the end of the project, which was the data
analysis piece. The data mining consultant talked about
the reports and showed how they helped management run
the business better.
The end. My heart stopped when I
realized my contact had given me bad information. The
president was very clear that our solution would never
work for him. Since we couldn’t make our contact look
bad in front of his boss, we had to move on to another
topic. (And the first thought did cross my mind!) I knew
this was a tough situation to turn around. Then, when
the customer produced a survey they had been working on,
I realized there was much more information that my
contact had not shared with me.
What would I do differently next
time? I would be more careful about assuming information
from someone I didn’t know well enough. When I looked
back, I realized I really didn’t know how my contact
thinks. When you know how someone thinks, you can gauge
the accuracy and completeness of the responses they
give. Some customers give you thoughtful responses to
your questions. Others give answers just to respond to a
question. They don’t even care how accurate they are.
Perhaps they’re accurate at the time, but they don’t
feel the need to update you when the information
changes. My question about the project required more
complete information. The information evidently changed
over time. My contact didn’t feel the need to give me
that information. Next time I would ask far more
questions and assume far less.
I’m not a salesperson who suffers
from “happy ears.” Happy eared salespeople hear
everything their customers say in a positive light. If
you do suffer from “happy ears” you’re going to be more
vulnerable in your selling because you have a false
sense of security. Even if you don’t suffer from “happy
ears,” beware of assuming too much in selling. When you
assume less and check more, you’ll experience a real
sense of selling security.
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Action Items
1. Ask yourself how well you know
your customer. Can you trust what you are being told?
2. Can you triangulate information?
(Ask several people to see if the answer is the same.)
3. Do you always discuss what the
worst case could be before the sales call? Do you have a
plan for it?
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Selling Tip
From Maura’s ebook: 97 Ways to Sell
More Now E-Book
http://www.bestatselling.com/selling_tools.htm#5
Tip 9. Write an article about how
your business helps others in business and submit it for
publication to a local newspaper, trade journal or
magazine. Free publicity never hurt sales.
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What
do you think?
Here are the results of the selling
survey:
1. What part of selling do you find
most challenging?
Reaching prospects on the telephone
46.9%
Maura’s comments: Are you leaving a
message that sounds confident? Does it include a
compelling reason to call you back? (A good reason is
what you can do FOR your customer.) Are you persistent?
2. Where do you get sales support
and guidance from?
Other sales professionals 43.3%
Reading books 33.3%
Manager 13.3%
Maura’s comment: Isn’t it
interesting that managers are the last source of
guidance?
3. What would be most helpful to
make selling easier?
More customer feedback 29.4%
Maura’s Comment: Then why don’t you
ask? Why is a powerful question and salespeople need to
ask it more.
Let me know what you think about
selling.
Click here to take the selling
survey
You can email:
info@bestatselling.com for the responses.
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I'm always looking for success
stories and other tips from sales professionals. Please
feel free to email me at info@bestatselling.com with
ideas that have worked for you.
If you want to build customer
relationships for long-term business, you can easily do
it using Exacttarget (www.exacttarget.com) and their
CANSPAM compliant broadcast services.
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Need
an Article for Your Newsletter?
Articles from this newsletter may
be used in your free publications or posted on your web
when given the following credit:
Written by Maura Schreier-Fleming,
Best@Selling (www.BestatSelling.com). Maura works with
business and sales professionals who want to sell more
and be more productive at work. She is the author of
Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results.
For free articles, selling ideas
and morale boosters
visit http://www.BestatSelling.com
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About
Maura Schreier-Fleming
Invite Maura to speak at your next
conference or sales meeting! Contact:
info@bestatselling.com
Maura Schreier-Fleming works with
business and sales professionals to make it easier to
sell more and be more productive at work. Her
Best@Selling clients want to create long-term client
relationships. They include Fujitsu, Fannie Mae and Dr
Pepper/7UP. She has an M.S. in Textile Engineering from
Georgia Tech and was Mobil Oil's first female
lubrication engineer in the U.S. With over 20 years of
sales experience, she teaches the art and science of
selling with a unique hands-on perspective and a great
deal of real-life insight. She is the author of
Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results (a book
filled with ideas to make selling easier and more
productive. Her business column 'Selling Strategies'
appears in the Insurance Record magazine and her column
'Street Talk' appears in Jobbers World. You can contact
her for seminars at company or trade association
meetings at 972 380 0200 or info@BestatSelling.com
Privacy: At Best@Selling we take
privacy issues very seriously. Your information remains
with us and will never be sold, shared, or distributed
in any manner, for any reason.
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Contact Information
1. Our Web site:
http://www.BestatSelling.com
2. E-mail: info@bestatselling.com
3. Call: In Dallas 972 380 0200
4. Write us:
6757 Arapaho Rd., Suite 711-183
Dallas, TX 752448
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(c) Copyright 2005 Maura
Schreier-Fleming. All rights reserved
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