Monthly Newsletter with New Ideas to Sell More Now
February-2014
The Selling Quote for the Month
“A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.”
–Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist (1795-1881)
For Salespeople…
Listen carefully to your customers’ answers to your questions. Some are too afraid to tell you that they are never going to buy. Do you listen hopefully thinking that a maybe is a yes when really it’s not? Instead, make sure you’re hearing your customer’s real reason. The only way you will know is when you ask for clarification. A successful salesperson is able to skillfully uncover the real reason, deal with it, and either make the sale or move on.
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The Selling Ideas for this Month
Are You a Sales Visionary?
Do you know successful entrepreneurs? Ask them what they think made them successful. You’ll often find lots of reasons. I recently did that. I heard everything from coming to work every day and working hard to doing a better job of reducing risk. All of the answers are right—after all these people are all successful. So what’s the common denominator for success? I think it is that they are all visionaries. They saw what other people didn’t. Here’s what sales visionaries see.
Plant your garden. Managing a sales business is like tending a garden. Gardeners plant seeds and help them grow. Savvy gardeners start with good quality seeds.
Salespeople find prospects and help them grow. Sales visionaries start with the right prospects. The right prospects are the ones who have the potential to grow. How do you know you’ve got them? These prospects are able to make decisions quickly. Customers who take too long to make decisions miss business opportunities. The right prospects have plans, too. When you ask them how they’re going to grow, they are thoughtful. It may be a simple plan and that’s fine. People who have no plan make me nervous. Winging it has never worked for any successful business I’ve seen.
Can you make things grow? I’ve found that business visionaries need one thing to be successful. They thrive on possibilities and languish when needless obstacles are in their way. If you want to slow them down, create unnecessary work for them. Sure, they’ll get rid of the obstacles, but that will frustrate them.
Sales visionaries are the same. They remove obstacles for their customers. These sales visionaries make it easy for customers to work with them. How do they do it? They ask their customers about what gets in their way. They know their customers’ businesses. Then they look for ways to make it easier for their customers to work with them. One sales visionary created an easy to use order form that saved his customer time when ordering. Another sales visionary made sure deliveries were stocked on the customer’s shelf. Both did work that the customer would have had to do. These visionaries sell more because they make it easy for their customers to buy.
They’re creative listeners. Visionary salespeople solve customer problems. They solve problems, not just by using logic, but with their creative thinking. They are able to connect the dots of information in ways that will help their customers. Here’s what I mean.
One visionary realizes that if he could reduce risk for his customers, they would make more money. So he created a grid where he rated the risks they face. He evaluated risks based on the financial impact on their business and the importance to the company. He identified the important risks for his customers which had a big financial impact on their business. How did he do it? He reads many different journals and read about a financial tool that he decided to apply to his customers’ business. That’s creative thinking.
Being a visionary is key to business success. Start looking at your prospects and customers if you want to be a sales visionary. Are they growing? If not, you may need to take another look at what you’re doing.
Action Items
1. Are you calling on ideal prospects or those most likely to buy from you based on your past experience?
2. How are you making it easier for your customers to buy from you?
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DID YOU KNOW?
Here’s a tip this week for your sales success.
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So I never assume, here’s a brief list of services I offer.
A. Consulting/Coaching/Mentoring
By hour or by project.
- Plan sales call strategies
- Develop effective proposals that prevent “low price” shoppers from picking your competiton
- Reduce the stress of working for a difficult manager
- Shorten the time for a new hire to be productive
- Design customized selling tablet app
- New ideas to sell more now
- 90 Day Performance Plan for new sales hires to be productive faster and increase retentionFor info, please see Consulting/Coaching.Call 972 380 0200 for a free initial consultation.
B. Speaking at Sales Meetings to Improve Sales Performance
Present Sales Performance improvement programs at sales meetings and conferences
RECOMMENDED IF:
- Your salespeople lose proposals based on price.
- You have underperforming salespeople.
- Your salespeople have too many deals that they say are closing and they don’t close.