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
-Upcoming Programs
-The Selling Ideas for the Month
-Action Items
-Selling Tips
-What do you think? Please help with a quick, 6 question selling survey.
-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
“Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.” Woody Allen
Woody’s wry observation applies to sales. So if you’re selling pencils, you’ve just saved yourself a sales call if you sell office supplies! One of the biggest reasons I see salespeople failing to reach their goals is that they don’t know their customer. These salespeople kid themselves into thinking that their customer is everyone. They think that everyone has an equal probability of buying. Kid yourself no more! You have an ideal customer who most likely will need and buy your products. Define the criteria for your ideal customer. Is it a particular volume, location, industry, business, stage or growth or age of customer? What conditions need to be met for a customer to need your products? If you haven’t taken the time to thoughtfully approach who you should be selling to, why not do it now? This is the target you want to hit. If a prospect is too far a field from what you have identified, be honest with yourself and don’t waste your time. If you have identified your ideal prospect, ask yourself the next time you stop at a prospect, “Is this really an ideal prospect for me?” Good selling is finding the prospects who are most likely to use your products and services. It’s not coercing unlikely prospects to buy.
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Upcoming Programs
When : September 9, 16, 23, 30
11.30 AM- 1:30 PM
Where: Small Business Development Center
4800 West Park Blvd.
Plano, TX
What: Master Selling Series
For more information: 972-985-3749
When : Monday, October 10 11.45 AM- 1:30 PM
Where: The Gates at Meadows Museum located on the SMU campus inside the Meadows Museum, 9400 Bishop Blvd. 1st Floor
What: Women Speaks Series: Learn to be Lucky!
For more information: 214 768 9035
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The Selling Ideas for this Month
Selling Survival Strategies
The year is going along and your sales are heading south. What’s a panicked salesperson to do to survive? Here are some ideas.
Have a plan. Most salespeople make plans for achieving sales objectives. They carefully outline who their target accounts are, what their sales potential is with each of these accounts, and when the sale should close. This considerable planning effort keeps them focused and ensures a higher probability of success. This is enough when the economy is in full swing. You need another plan to be prepared when things are tough. As this year closes and you are forecasting for next year, develop your backup plan. Sure you expect everything to go well. What are you going to do if it doesn’t happen? Have you considered building in a margin for failure? This additional margin comes from adding accounts that are additional possibilities of sales. You’ve got to have more potential to pursue when business looks like it will get tougher. It may be too late for this year, but next year you won’t be caught short.
Losing may be new to you. The salespeople I know are a very competitive group of people. The game of sales isn’t customer versus salesperson. It’s salesperson versus himself. And just like most competitive people, salespeople are not good losers. It’s tough to admit to yourself that you’re losing the game when you’re falling short of meeting your sales objectives. It’s to be expected that you’ll get depressed. Just make sure that your pity party is short lived. It helps to be able to discuss your misery with others. Be selective with whom you share your anguish. Some customers want to associate only with “winners” and strong companies. If they sense you are less than that, or if your company is vulnerable, they might want to do business with another company. A good manager should hear your concern as an opportunity to offer support and ideas, not criticism. If you expect to be chastised by your manager, pick someone else to share your feelings. W! ith whomever you speak, present your feelings from the perspective of needing to unburden your feelings, not being angry. While I don’t recommend getting accustomed to losing, you should remember that selling failure isn’t lethal.
Focus on what you have, not what you lack. Can you remember why you first considered sales as a career? It may have been the independence and need to control at least some part of your day. Perhaps it was the need to face new challenges every day. You may enjoy the process of selling. Some get a great deal of joy participating on a selling team. When things are going poorly, that is the time to remember both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. The intrinsic rewards of selling are your sales. The extrinsic rewards are what you get from the process of selling. We tend to focus on and measure our worth only by the intrinsic rewards. Selling satisfaction comes not only from sales results, but also from what the process of selling does for us.
Selling is one of the toughest jobs in the world. There are too many different ways to hear “no” every single selling day. Many variables are out of our control. We have to constantly learn new ways to accomplish the same tasks in a challenging and changing environment. Weak people will never make it in sales. Successful salespeople know that they have no choice but to face the rigors of the job. Selling may be a simple process, but no one ever said it was going to be easy.
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Action Items
1. What additional prospects can you pursue who will provide a cushion for your sales that don’t close as you expect them to?
2. Who is the easiest client to work with? Who is your best client? Who do you want to sell to? Use the answers to these questions to define your ideal prospect. Pursue customers that look more like your ideal customer. You’ll find it easier to sell.
3. Who motivates you? Who saps your energy? Stay with the first group of people and avoid the second at all costs!
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Selling Tip
From Maura’s ebook: 97 Ways to Sell More Now E-Book
https://www.bestatselling.com/selling_tools.htm#5
Tip: Contact 3 former clients and find out why they’re not buying anymore from you. If the contact changed, see if you can do business now.
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What do you think?
I’m always interested in ways to help make selling easier for other sales professionals. I find that some sales professionals make it harder than it needs to be. They think that all customers are their likely prospects. This is of course not true.
Only those prospects who are likely to need your products or services are your likely (ideal) prospects. Does that mean that once you’ve identified your ideal prospects it will be easier? No. That’s because too many sales people kid themselves. They have a prospect who looks nothing like their ideal customer. Even knowing that, they still make the sales call.
Don’t kid yourself. Find the customers most likely to buy. Don’t waste your time on the customers least likely to buy– just because you like them.
Let me know what you think about selling.
Take the quick, 6 question selling survey by clicking here: https://cl.exct.net/?ffcc17-fe5a16787d650c7c7317-fe26157070620c78711d73-ff281d70706d
You can email: info@bestatselling.com for the responses.
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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.
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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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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