It's the holidays. You may be frantically shopping to find the perfect gift for family and friends. That's what most people are doing this time of year. But what gift are you going to give yourself? You must give yourself a gift. Let me help you choose one. Why me? You may be thinking I don't need a gift. But of course you do. Sales is a unique and challenging profession. … [Read more...]
Reach Your Sales Goals: Year End Sales Planning
Congratulations if you’re on track to meet or exceed your sales goals this year. Even if this year didn’t turn out the way you wanted, now is the perfect time to do sales planning so that next year you get better results. Conduct a planning meeting. Your customers are also planning their budgets for next year while you are developing your sales goals for next year. You can … [Read more...]
Getting Referrals: Are you ruining potential business opportunities?
Your new business comes either from your work in prospecting or the referrals from others who know you. Think about your last Chamber of Commerce event or Rotary meeting when you met new people who could refer business to you. People do try to do business with people they like. Did you leave them with a positive or negative impression? Who does the talking? No one likes to … [Read more...]
Lost Sales: 3 Reasons Why You’re Not Selling Today
Here's a check to avoid lost sales. 1. You have no sales strategy plan. Think about your preparation for your last sales call. Did you plan the questions you would ask your prospect? Maybe you did. Were they strategic in that they helped uncover customer problems, needs or wants that could be solved by buying your products or services? Congratulations if you did. A strategic … [Read more...]
Focus on the Sales Process Not Sales Results
Some people think selling is easy. If it were really so easy then everyone could do it. Selling is not easy. Your job is to reduce your sales frustrations and make your selling easier. That’s why you should focus on the sales process, not sales results. Accept that you cannot control what other people do. What makes selling so hard is that you can only accomplish your sales … [Read more...]
Sales and Operations=More Sales
What's sales have to do with operations? Everything if you want to sell more. Think about who you could invite to your next sales meeting. Are you thinking you should invite people from operations? That department might not be the one that comes to mind. You may be thinking, what would operations people have to contribute to a sales meeting? That’s not the point. Salespeople … [Read more...]
Sales preparation counts.
"After the game is before the game." - Sepp Herberger, Manager of the '54 FIFA World Cup Soccer winners For Salespeople... When does your selling start? Your sales preparation should start well before you sit down in your prospect’s office or call a prospect on the phone. You have a lot of preparation to do. I work with my clients to prepare before their sales calls. Here … [Read more...]
Measure to Improve Sales Performance
Let’s say you’re having a great year. What if you want to do even better next year? You can improve your sales performance if you know what to measure. Here are some areas to consider. Number of Sales Calls made. You are making it harder to be successful in sales if you’re going to sit in your office all day. While you’re there you spend time working on prospect research … [Read more...]
Put Your Sales Manager To Work
How much easier would your selling be if you could partner with another great sales professional and sell? In sales, two heads are better than one. That second head just might be your sales manager. If you want to tap into another great selling resource, put your sales manager to work. Make sales calls. Are you always making sales calls by yourself? Now is the time to … [Read more...]
Confusing customers loses sales
Is Customer Confusion Costing You Sales? You confuse ‘em, you lose ‘em. That’s what a great direct marketer Paul Goldberg once said. It’s the same for sales. You certainly wouldn’t confuse your customers intentionally. But what about when you don’t know that you’re creating confusion? I recently needed to purchase a certified letter for a business document I … [Read more...]