The Selling Newsletter
The Selling Newsletter
from Best@Selling
A free monthly newsletter of ideas to help make your selling easier.
Selling is the easiest job in the world…Just ask anyone who is NOT in sales! Best wishes for YOUR successful selling—Maura
These are this month’s newsletters sections.
1. Selling Quote
2. Selling Action Items
3. Selling Tips
4. Something to Report
5. To Subscribe
6. Need Articles for Your Newsletter?
7. About Maura Schreier-Fleming
8.Contact Info
The Selling Quote for the Month
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Chinese Proverb
So what are you waiting for? You probably set your goals for this year (hopefully) many months ago. Are you on track to make them? If not, what do you need to change to get back on track? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is Einstein’s definition of insanity. Sometimes the work seems overwhelming. When I face projects that appear too big, I say to myself, “Just do something. Just one thing.” I find that once I say to do something, no matter how small, the rest seems to flow. It may be slow at first, but it gets me moving. That’s just what I needed. Hopefully, that’s what you need to get going, too.
Will you marry me? Eventually.
Selling is a lot like marriage. It’s a relationship where partners agree to work together. They form similarly, too. A first date rarely ends with a marriage acceptance. A first sales call gets similar results. A marriage acceptance, like the sales process, takes time and requires persistence. I recently heard James P. Cecil, a marketing specialist, speak. He said that about 20% of prospects will never buy. About 20% of prospects who inquire about your products or services will buy something like it within 90 days. 19% will buy within the first 6 months and 33% will finally make a purchase after 24 months. The problem with this is that the first contact has been long forgotten when the customer is ready to buy.
Start a relationship. Sure it’s nice to find a buyer with an immediate need for your products or services. Yet most buyers are not the low hanging fruit. Since most buyers are later purchasers, isn’t the best time to meet a prospective customer when they have a serious and immediate need and when they already understand and prefer you as their first choice provider? It’s your job to create that interest. You do it with the strategy that Cecil developed called “nurture marketing.” The basic premise is keeping in touch with the right people at a meaningful level and on a regular basis.
How do I build a relationship? Letter writing is an effective way to build a relationship with a prospect. Your objective is to capture and hold your prospect’s attention. It starts with getting your prospect to open the letter. You can do this with a specially selected enclosure, something big enough to make the envelope slightly bulge. You want the recipient to be curious about what’s in the envelope. Ascendix Technologies, who sells customer relationship and sales automation software, recently applied the strategy. They mailed a letter to prospects who had attended a nurture marketing seminar. In the envelope along with the letter were pumpkin seeds. The letter content should create an awareness of the problem you can solve. Wes Snow, Ascendix’ President, wrote about prospects being like the pumpkin seeds that were enclosed. They needed to be nurtured. He cited a statistic that 95% of all companies identified as prospects by a sales rep simply vanish from the reps call list. What also vanishes is the opportunity to develop a long-term relationship.
Keep going. Always make your second contact with your prospect an education-packed and a “nurturous” one. You’re not ready to ask for anything from them at this point. Most likely they’re not ready to give you any business either. Information and “them-serving” knowledge-based enclosures tells them you are thinking of them. This contact could include a reprint of an article about you or a topic you think might particularly interest them. You could invite them to an educational seminar to further get to know your prospects. This might even be one your company presents. Snow will invite prospects to future Business Boot Camp seminars that he hosts. You could also introduce them to other prospects. Just make sure you are targeting the right decision maker. It should be the one writing the checks.
How do you know it’s working? Your prospects will call you when your nurture marketing program is working. They call you because they now trust you and they have a need. They also believe you’re the best company to work with. Nurture marketing gives prospects a preview of how they’re going to be treated as customers. One company president who uses nurture marketing says, “It’s treating people the way you want to be treated, so that your clients say, ‘This is the kind of company I want to do business with.'” And just like a good marriage, with nurture marketing after the sale, your business relationship will last for a very long time.
3. Selling Tips
1. Do you have a process to track your prospects so you don’t forget about them? Once you decide to keep in touch with them, you need to be organized and track the results.
2. Do your customers know all that you can do for them? Your existing customers are easier to sell to than prospects are. Your customers know you and trust you. Make sure that they know all of the products you sell and all the services you can offer them.
3. Email is a very effective selling tool to keep in touch with prospects and customers. ExactTarget ( https://cl.extm.us/?fe6615707366077f7012-fe2610707066037a721174 ) makes it easy to use email to sell.
Do you want to be notified of Maura’s upcoming public seminars? Send an email to info@bestatselling.com with the subject: Upcoming Seminars and your email address. You’ll get the information about Maura’s public seminars. Programs are held quarterly.
4. Something to Report
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. To thank you, you’ll receive a free subscription to The Selling E-Letter™, a bi-monthly selling newsletter. ($50 value)
5. To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
Help us spread the word. Please forward this free newsletterto co-workers, friends and associates.
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6. 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, president of Best@Selling . ( www.BestatSelling.com ). Maura works with business and sales professionals so they can 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 https://www.BestatSelling.com
7. About Maura Schreier-Fleming
Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals to make it easier to sell more and be more productive at work. Her https://cl.extm.us/?fe781d767d6c0d7473-fe2610707066037a721174clients 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. You can contact her for seminars at company or trade association meetings at 972 380 0200 or mailto:info@BestatSelling.com
Privacy: AtBest@Sellingwe take privacy issues very seriously. Your information remains with us and will never be sold, shared, or distributed in any manner, for any reason.
8. Contact Information
Have Maura speak at your next conference or sales meeting.
1. Our Web site: https://cl.extm.us/?fe761d767d6c0d747d-fe2610707066037a721174
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 2004 Maura Schreier-Fleming. All rights reserved
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