The Selling Newsletter
The Selling Newsletter
from Best@Selling
A free monthly newsletter of ideas to help make your selling easier.
Selling is the easiest job in the world…Just ask anyone who is NOT in sales! Best wishes for YOUR successful selling—Maura
This issue contains:
-The Selling Quote for the Month
-The Selling Ideas for the Month
-Action Items
-Something to Report/What would you recommend?
-To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
-Need an article for your newsletter?
-About Maura Schreier-Fleming
-Contact Information
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The Selling Quote for the Month
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker
Some days the creating part is the toughest. On the days when your selling is more difficult than others, remember that if you decide to do just one thing or take just one step, you’ll get yourself out of the doldrums and on your way to creating your future. On those challenging days you may be tempted to do nothing or even give up. Instead of doing nothing, spend your time defining what you do want and why you want it. Then decide to take just one small step towards making that goal a reality. If you want to accomplish something, your willingness to do just one thing at a time, step after step, will get you where you want to be. Your dreams will take time. Give yourself permission to take the time to make them a reality. You can predict your future when you take the steps to create it.
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The Selling Ideas for this Month
Amazing Selling
Do you plan for your sales calls to take a half hour or possibly an hour? What would you do if your clients only allowed you minutes for your presentation? Talking fast won’t lead to your selling success. I recently worked with a seasoned sales professional and here’s what I learned that makes this pharmaceutical salesperson one of the best.
Plan the call and be prepared for frustration. When your average call is 3.75 minutes, you have to be prepared to use every second you have. Before each call the sales rep had set the objective for that call. In the pharmaceutical business the salespeople are also heavily regulated regarding how they can present their information. For physicians who wrote many prescriptions for the pharmaceuticals she was selling, her objective was to support the doctor with information. She did this by providing additional product information and research data that would reinforce his selection of her products for patients. For doctors who wrote fewer prescriptions she would review the research that showed which conditions were best suited to her products. For both types of physicians, she reviewed the voluminous reports and showed the doctor the exact lines where the useful information was. She then handed the reports to the doctor. I wondered why she didn’t highlight the references in the report. Legally, she is not allowed to do that. Nor can she make any notations on the report. Talk about tough selling.
What do you need to know? This sales rep is not a nurse. Yet on her time she takes the same continuing education courses that nurses are required to take for credit. She studies and takes the tests and passes them. Her company does not require her to take the classes or the tests. Yet she does. She has taken so many courses that recruiting firms have gotten her name and assumed she was a nurse. They’ve called her and asked her if she would be interested in nursing positions. She is not interested in being a nurse. She takes the courses because they increase her knowledge of medicine and she learns the language that physicians speak. She is only interested in being the best pharmaceutical rep she can be.
Are you able to speak the language of your customers? Are you familiar with the equipment they use and how they operate it? Can you hold your own with a customer as if you were on the other side of the desk? Your company may not require you to take more classes to be a more knowledgeable sales person. You might find some classes to enroll in when you ask yourself what you could know that would help make it easier for your customers to work with you. You certainly don’t have to know it all. An indispensable salesperson is not someone who knows all the answers, but someone who is eager to find the answers.
Be a resource. Pharmaceutical companies keep the paper companies in business with their glossy literature and handouts. Physicians are deluged with information and studies. This sales rep knows her own products extremely well. She also knows the strengths, weaknesses and formulations of her competitors very, very well. She’s had her physicians ask her about her competitors’ products. One physician had great confidence and trust in her knowledge. After she explained in great detail a new competitor’s product, he threw the competitor’s stack of information in the garbage. He said, “I guess I don’t need that product.”
You may have much more that a few minutes for each of your sales calls. You should still be as prepared and focused as if you had only minutes. If you make each minute count both before and during your sales calls, think of how much more you could sell.
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Action Items
1. Set objectives for each sales call. What you set as your objective will determine the materials you bring to the call and the questions that you ask.
2. What knowledge could you acquire that would make your customer perceive you as an expert? Ask your customer what he reads and what information helps him do his job. See if you can acquire that knowledge.
3. How well do you really know your competition? Ask your customer questions to learn their perceptions of your competition. Be prepared to address the perceived strengths of your competition. Determine a strategy that showcases your products’ strengths compared to your competitor.
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Something to Report /What would you recommend?
What do you do that makes you successful? What advice would you give another salesperson? Send me your tip and I’ll share it with everyone who responds.
I’m always looking for success stories and other tips from sales professionals. Please feel free to email me at info@bestatselling.com with ideas that have worked for you. To thank you, you’ll receive a free subscription to The Selling E-Letter™, a bi-monthly selling newsletter. ($50 value).
If you want to build customer relationships for long-term business, you can easily do it using Exacttarget (www.exacttarget.com) and their CANSPAM compliant broadcast services.
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To Subscribe to the Selling Newsletter
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Need an Article for Your Newsletter?
Articles from this newsletter may be used in your free publications or posted on your web when given the following credit:
*Written by Maura Schreier-Fleming, president of Best@Selling . ( www.BestatSelling.com ). Maura works with business and sales professionals so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results.
For free articles, selling ideas and morale boosters
visit https://www.BestatSelling.com
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About Maura Schreier-Fleming
Invite Maura to speak at your next conference or sales meeting! Contact: info@bestatselling.com
Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals to make it easier to sell more and be more productive at work. Her Best@Selling clients want to create long-term client relationships. They include Fujitsu, Fannie Mae and Dr Pepper/7UP. She has an M.S. in Textile Engineering from Georgia Tech and was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. With over 20 years of sales experience, she teaches the art and science of selling with a unique hands-on perspective and a great deal of real-life insight. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results (a book filled with ideas to make selling easier and more productive. Her business column ‘Selling Strategies’ appears in the Insurance Record magazine and her column ‘Street Talk’ appears in Jobbers World. You can contact her for seminars at company or trade association meetings at 972 380 0200 or info@BestatSelling.com
Privacy: At Best@Selling we take privacy issues very seriously. Your information remains with us and will never be sold, shared, or distributed in any manner, for any reason.
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Contact Information
1. Our Web site: https://www.BestatSelling.com
2. E-mail: info@bestatselling.com
3. Call: In Dallas 972 380 0200
4. Write us:
6757 Arapaho Rd., Suite 711-183
Dallas, TX 752448
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(c) Copyright 2005 Maura Schreier-Fleming. All rights reserved
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