[email protected]

Sales training and sales consulting to increase sales.

Call For A Sales Consultation

972-380-0200
  • About
    • What We Do to Increase Sales
    • Sales Philosophy on Hiring Salespeople
    • Clients
    • Customer Comments
    • In the Media
    • Contact Us
  • Speaking and Training
    • Sales Coaching for Performance Improvement
    • Professional Speaking
    • Sales Training
    • Sales Consultant for Business Development & Increase Sales
  • Sales Products
    • Books
    • Audio CDs
    • Webinars
    • E-Books
    • Manuals
    • Booklets
    • Merchandise
  • Free Resources
    • Videos
    • The Selling Newsletter
    • What is your Selling Issue?
    • Recommended Reading
    • Free Reprint Articles
    • White Papers
    • Sales Pro
  • Upcoming Programs
  • Membership
You are here: Home / Blog / Free Reprint Articles / Danger Signals and Warning Signs

Danger Signals and Warning Signs

December 13, 2013 By maurasf

 

Are your customers giving you danger signals?
What danger signs are you missing in your sales and selling?

Life is filled with danger signals and warning signs. If you pay attention you can avoid the potholes and the problems that they cause. An oil leak in your car can be fixed with a $3 gasket. If ignored, your engine could seize and you’ll pay $2000 for a replacement. Selling has its own danger signals and warning signs.

Not reading is dangerous. You need to learn about changes in business. Change is a warning signal. Any change is an opportunity for you or your competition. When staff or company needs change, salespeople need to respond quickly to ensure that their products continue to meet customer needs.

Reading the newspaper is a source of knowledge about change. When you read the newspaper, you learn about changes in business that impact your customers’ businesses and then your own. How else can you easily learn about mergers, strategic focus issues, competition, growth and failure to meet business objectives?

Remember sales and business books, too. Even incorporating 15 minutes a day of additional reading will have a positive impact on your business knowledge and ultimately your business.

Having difficulty making call objectives for a sales call is a sign you’re in trouble. Your job is to bring value to your customers. Another greeting by a smiling face is not a source of value.

Objectives that add value to your customers’ operations involve avoiding costs, reducing costs, or simplifying an operation for your customer. Planning before the sales call should include the steps to accomplish your objective. Having difficulty establishing your call objective is a clue that you might not be giving your customers a reason to do business with you.

Not knowing key decision makers is a bad sign. All accounts have critical decision makers. The economic decision maker reaches decisions based on cost. The technical decision maker decides based on specifications. The user makes decisions based on satisfaction with using your product.

If you’re only calling on one decision maker; if you’re unfamiliar with all decision makers; or if you’re unaware of each of their concerns, the red light goes on. Pay attention when your contacts move on and are replaced by others. You need to reestablish relationships with the new contact by identifying their key concerns and motivators.

Forgetting to do the work to make a new contact loyal will leave you vulnerable to the past loyalties they’ve established with other suppliers.

No systematic process for prioritizing accounts is serious. Your selling time should be given to your accounts based on their probability of buying, their importance to your sales goals, and their need to see you.

You need to ask and answer, “When is this account likely to buy? Is this a strategic account because of location, a particular product or volume? Is this a significant problem that warrants my time now?” In all cases the answer will determine what you should be doing and how much time you spend with each account.

In all cases determine that your customer’s needs are met with your lowest cost solution. If a phone call will work, why make a sales call? All customer contacts should be made after you identify your sales priorities and determine appropriate levels of service according to those priorities.

Do you find yourself saying what you would have, should have or could have done after you fix a problem? This is a sign that you ignored a danger signal. It’s so much easier to avoid a problem than to fix it. When you hear yourself saying, “If only I had called on that new project engineer earlier I wouldn’t have lost the account” it’s time to start looking at your other business. You’re probably missing some warning signs there, too.

Tweet
PinIt

Filed Under: Free Reprint Articles

THE SELLING E-LETTER® SIGN UP

Social media

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Selling Tips

*What was your last “mistake?” Did you make it before? There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes in sales provided you are making different mistakes. (You are learning from them!)

About the principal

Would you take auto mechanics classes when you buy a car? Maura did because she wanted to be able to work on her car. She takes that same approach to selling. She can show you how to get below the surface of selling to learn why and how different strategies work. She will show you which skills to implement that will shorten your sales cycle and increase your sales. She was Mobil Oil's first female Lubrication Engineer in the United States and one of Chevron's top 5 salespeople in the country. She knows what works for sales.

"I would recommend your work to other sales organizations who want to get better results from improved selling strategies."
Jamey Rootes
President
Houston Texans

Sales Expert at Allbusiness.com

Selling is the easiest job in the world. Just ask anyone who is not in sales. Read Maura’s ideas on “more brain…less mouth” selling to make your selling easier and more successful.

Maura’s Allbusiness blog posts

Recent Posts

  • Sales Is Not Fair
  • Less Stress Selling:  What You Can Do to Reduce Sales Stress
  • Segment Your Prospects and Customers. Are Your Largest Prospects and Customers the Most Important?
  • Women In Sales: Beware Mansplaining and other gender stereotypes!
  • Sell In A Recession

Search

Copyright © 2023 · [email protected]