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You are here: Home / Newsletters / The Selling Newsletter January 2013

The Selling Newsletter January 2013

January 1, 2013 By maurasf

The Selling Newsletter for Sales Professionals

January 2013

SALES QUOTE

�The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell."
–Confucius

For Salespeople…

Who knew Confucius was a sales consultant? He’s right. Do you ever encounter those who cite endless data to kill your idea when you’re planning your selling strategy? They may be right on paper. Yet, you shouldn’t immediately fold your position especially if you’ve been gathering some soft data. Soft data includes what other people say and what you hear and interpret. Remember, no one ever said “I want a minivan (and well before that a Model T), an iPad or any of the other wonderful tools that delighted millions of buyers. Successful salespeople will tell you that you have to trust your gut, your intuition and your experience to sell. As the new year begins, now would be a good time to listen to Confucius. After all, isn’t it better to understand what will sell rather than to be right?
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THE BLOG S AND OTHER COLUMNS

I’m now writing The Real Deal, a column on women in business for Allbusiness.com Hope you’ll read more ideas so you can achieve your success in business.

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THE SELLING IDEAS FOR THE MONTH TO SELL MORE NOW

Avoid These Selling Mistakes This Year

The statistics I’ve seen say that 40% of you have already broken your New Year’s resolutions. Instead of focusing on what you’re going to do this year, why not focus on what you’re not going to do? Here are some of the mistakes I correct with coaching clients so they can be successful sales professionals.

Propose too soon. Stop. That’s what you should do the next time a customer asks you for a proposal. Ask yourself if you are ready to spend your time on creating the proposal. How do you know you’re ready? You’re ready if you know what problem the customer has, how much it’s costing him now, and verbal confirmation that the customer places a high priority on doing something about it now.

Call on the low probability sales. Who is your ideal prospect? Do you even know? If you don’t that’s the first thing to do this year. Instead of thinking everyone is a prospect, focus on the customers who are most likely to need and want what you sell.

Look back on your last ten proposals. What are the common elements of the customers you sold? Now find more prospects that look like those customers. Unless you’re going to change something, you’re kidding yourself to think that you can be successful with prospects who are different than the ones you’ve been successful with in the past.

Waste a lot of time. Be honest with yourself. How long does it take you to put your hands on your sales materials, customer information or a business tool that you need to do your work? You’re wasting time if you’re going through more than three steps.

I see too many salespeople without an organizational plan to manage their business. Here are three things to do now to save you lots of time this year. First, review your business processes. How do you organize account information? Is it working for you? If not, modify it. Look to other people with successful systems and adapt their system to your business.

Second, clean out your files. Come on. How necessary is that invoice from ten years ago? Even better is to not save some of the stuff that you did in the past. Third, schedule one hour each week to work on your business processes to make sure they are working and to modify what doesn’t.

This year can be your best year yet. It’s all up to you. Just start doing what works well for you and make sure you stop doing what doesn’t. Isn’t it nice to hear that for successful selling you need to do less work, not more?
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ACTION ITEMS

1. Define your ideal prospect. Be specific regarding age, gender and other demographics. Include business location and size. Also include psychographics or how your clients think. Are they risk takers or not?
2. Schedule at least 30 minutes this week to organize your office.

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DID YOU KNOW?

Here’s a tip this week for your sales success.

Massive Health announced at conference presented by the HBS Women’s Student Association in 2012, that it was reported that 80% of women at the top (in business) have husbands who don’t work.

Source Forbes.com 2/15/12
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Programs
You can check for current programs.
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Here are some selling tools to help you sell more now. Click on the photo to find out more!
Monday Morning Sales Tips : A book that has quick ideas for you to be more successful in sales.
Real-World Selling: A book with selling skills and strategies that work in the real world of sales. Secrets of Persuasion: Audio CD for the clues to use to speed-read people and close more business.

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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

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