Part of your sales strategy should include making it easier to buy your products. What you do can make it easier for a buyer to make a purchasing decision. But, why leave your sales success in your buyer’s control? You can also make it easier to sell. Try before you buy. There are many customers who are afraid that if they buy your product or service that it might not work. … [Read more...]
Why Isn’t Your Sale Closing?
All too often salespeople find themselves in that never never land of their sales not closing. They may be so close to the situation that they don’t realize why their sales are not moving forward. See if you are doing any of the following because that’s why your sales aren’t closing. What did the customer say or do? In many companies there are weekly sales meetings. Sales … [Read more...]
What is Your Sales Call Score?
The formidable, former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, was famous for asking his constituents a question. As he walked the streets of New York, he would ask, "Hey! How'm I doing?" Being typical New Yorkers they would tell him quite directly. What about your sales? You know how you are doing when you make a sale. What about when you don’t make a sale? How are you doing then? Here’s … [Read more...]
3 Simple Rules for Sales Success
1. Plan ahead. Sales strategy is good. But, what do you do if your strategy doesn’t work? For every sales strategy you plan as the A plan, you should have a B plan, too. That way if your A plan doesn’t work, you have a plan right then that you can do. It’s a better way to attempt to salvage the meeting when you’re prepared. It’s often too difficult to think on your feet about … [Read more...]
Avoid These Sales Mistakes
You know that hindsight is 20-20. What if you didn’t have to rely on hindsight to be more successful in sales? Here’s how you can save yourself the hassles in selling when you know what you need to know early in your selling. Prevent sales results from going dead. I was talking with several sales professionals and a common complaint is with what happens after the salesman … [Read more...]
Keep Your Selling Simple
I find that keeping things simple keeps the stress down. That rule applies to selling. Here are some simple ideas that will also help you sell more. 1. Sell to the easy prospects. You might have many different types of prospects like most salespeople. You may also find once you do the analysis that it’s easier to sell to some prospects over others. I recently met with a … [Read more...]
How to Sell to Customers Who Don’t Know
Have you ever thought that your job included educating customers? A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted some interesting information about what some people don’t know. The Annenberg Public Policy Center found in a 2016 survey that 31% of respondents couldn’t name a single branch of government. As if that’s not alarming, there were the 10% of college graduates who … [Read more...]
Forget Resolutions: Think Differently. Sell Differently.
New Year’s resolutions work for some people. For others they are a waste of time. For those of you who want to get different results, but don’t want to waste your time on New Year’s resolutions that you’ll break, why not try some new ideas and sell differently? Here are a few ways to think differently next year. Sell Differently: Be more patient. Patience is a virtue when it … [Read more...]
If Your Company Holiday Party Is This Weekend…
I know that free food and drink releases some strange behavior in some people. Just in case that's you and you are planning on attending your company party this weekend or soon, you might want to read this column by Janice Podsada of the Omaha World-Hearld. Your job may be at stake... … [Read more...]
New Year’s Resolutions (The Ones To Keep!)
It’s that time again. The year is coming to an end and many of you are thinking about your New Year’s Resolutions. It won’t be too long before many of those same resolutions become a distant memory. Instead of wasting your time on resolutions that get broken, why not make some resolutions that you can actually keep? Focus on process not results. You might have some difficult … [Read more...]