Honesty is the best policy, but unfortunately you’re not going to always find honesty in business and sales. Being able to detect deception in sales is a useful skill. Knowing who can’t be trusted or relied on is important if your goals depend on others. Here are some deceptions in sales that I've seen. Non-answers are deceptive. Working in a group presents challenges … [Read more...]
Make It Easier for Your Customers to Hear You When You Sell
What’s one sales skill that you will work on this year? Your listening skills can be improved if you are like most salespeople. As you begin to make sales calls this year, evaluate who is doing most of the talking during your sales calls. You are fine if your customer is doing 80%. You might need to work on your listening skills if you are doing 80% of the talking. Why? … [Read more...]
Are you selling or manipulating?
This is why salespeople get a bad name. In a recent study it turns out that when you make a superfluous apology (knowing you didn't cause the problem or it was beyond your control) it has the result of making others trust you. Here's where motives come into play. I have a problem if you are apologizing for inconveniences you know you didn't cause only because you want to get … [Read more...]
The 80/20 rule for predicting sales success
You can tell the quality of the sales call by who is doing the talking. If your customer is doing 80% of the talking and you’re talking 20% give yourself some points. You want customers to feel comfortable with you. You need the information that only they have. You also need to hear if and how your customers understand your message. You can only learn this if they talk … [Read more...]
Could you create copycat buyers?
Copycats are a good thing. Social copying is the phenomenon of looking to other people to show us what to do. That's what a TV track taps into. It shows us where to laugh and we feel better knowing that we’re part of the group. We also eat at crowded restaurants because it allows us to copy the other people who have chosen what we believe to be a good restaurant. Think of … [Read more...]