The Selling Newsletter
The Selling Quote for the Month
“The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
George Bernard Shaw
I’m going to be delivering a presentation soon to the Society of Human Resource Managers at their annual meeting. It’s on Power Persuasion and how to be more persuasive so you can get what you want—sales or other results. Many technical people have illusions about what makes them persuasive. They think that the more they speak technically about their products, the more the person will be persuaded. Logic alone has never persuaded anyone. If not, why are almost one third of Americans obese? (You know they know logically that Coca Cola for breakfast is not healthy.) Yet many sales professionals think that the more they present the technical aspects of their products and services the more likely the customer will buy. Forget it. The only response you’ll probably get is boring the customer. Instead of an emphasis on just the technical aspects of your product, try to tap into your customer’s emotions. What makes it painful for your customers to do their jobs? Why would using your products delight your customers? People think with logic, but act with emotions. When the have feelings about your product, they’re more likely to buy. Their emotions motivate them. Your job is to ask the questions to uncover these emotions. When you do, there will be no illusion about your communication effectiveness. Your customer will buy.
I’m now a guest columnist for the Dallas, Austin and Houston Business Journals. My column is called “Customer Connections.” I’ll be answering readers’ questions about selling. Do you have any selling questions? Send them to info@bestatselling.com
The Selling Ideas for this Month
It’s getting clearer…
How many times have you heard that you need to anticipate what your customers want? It’s the best way to keep them satisfied. For those of you without crystal balls, you may be wondering how to do it. Successful venture capitalists are great at predicting what business projects will do well. Their process for selecting projects to develop can apply to selling. It should help us get a better view of what will work in our customers’ future.
Learn to see patterns. Geoff Yang is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with one of the best track records in the business. His annual return on investment is 300%. He was responsible for transforming business plans into the successful web ventures Ask Jeeves and Excite. He supports people who are champions of an idea. These people recognize patterns where others see nothing or chaos in the marketplace. Their awareness allows them to spot unexploited niche opportunities. Yang also spots trends which give life to these ideas. Spotting a trend is seeing patterns in the randomness of things that occur. Yang uses the formula to look for early technology trends that will cause major shifts in the economy.
We should look for trends with our customers. Look for similarities in what is happening. Listen for trends in what they say. If two of your customers talk about the same situation, concern, or say the same thing that starts with “I wish I could have…,” “I’d like to have” or any similar statement, your antenna should go up. These statements could indicate a trend worth noticing. Ask yourself if you could do something to address the situation or concern. The Selling E-Letter was developed because I noticed how many salespeople lack the time to read business books.
Marketplace changes are also a source of trends. The echo boomer market, made up of Americans born since 1979, is the largest demographic target in the U.S. It’s even larger than the baby boomers, born 1946-64, by about 5 million people. Can the presence of this population impact to whom you are marketing and how you approach them?
Learn to be creative. Creativity is perceiving what others miss even though they are able to see the same things you do. As a result, you are able to generate new, useful ideas. With Yang’s start-ups, creativity is essential to churn out innovations at a fast pace. Regardless of the pace of your business, creativity can be the source of a solution that anticipates a customer’s need.
Being skilled at creativity starts with a belief in your creativity. Creativity in sales includes taking the process and solutions you’ve used to solve one customer’s problem and applying them to other customers. It’s looking at your existing customer base and seeing the possibilities of who could be doing business together. If one customer makes widgets, you could ask yourself who also buys widgets. Avoid limiting your thinking. Ask yourself who sells to the same customer that the widget company does. Perhaps both companies can reduce the costs of doing business.
We can anticipate what our customers need. Look for similarities and put different pieces of information together creatively. We can even discover needs that have yet to be identified. Your anticipation will help your customers see that you are clearly the supplier for them. Can you think of a better way to retain your customer’s business?
Action Items
1. What trends have you noticed recently?
2. How can you apply the trend to sell more of your product or service?
Selling Tools to Help YOU Sell More
Click on the image to learn more.
Selling Tips
Get more selling tips from Maura’s ebook: 97 Ways to Sell More Now E-Book
https://www.bestatselling.com/e-books.html
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Looking for new strategies to improve your persuasion skills? This easy to apply Audio CD will give you many new ideas to easily improve your persuasion skills so you can sell more and close business faster.
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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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Written by Maura Schreier-Fleming, Best@Selling (www.BestatSelling.com). Maura works with business and sales professionals who want to sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results.
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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
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2. E-mail: info@bestatselling.com
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