Category: Articles

Sales Tip – Be Responsive!

You can take this tip to the bank! Salespeople have always displayed varying degrees of responsiveness to client needs but today, this quality damn near seems to be a lost art. And, if you are dealing with a client who demonstrates a high sense of urgency, this characteristic isn’t even optional. If you want their business, you too will need to step up your pace. Let’s look at this another way. In a competitive situation, with all things being equal, who will get the business? Will it be the “highly responsive salesperson” or the one who “gets to it when it is convenient”? If you chose the latter … I sure hope that you will be more successful in your next selection of  a career.

What is responsive? Actually, it is a lot of different things, It is … Continue reading “Sales Tip – Be Responsive!”

Sales Tip – Adding Conditions & Contingencies To Order Forms

I’m really going to go “old school” here. For whatever reason (maybe some consider this to be too pushy), many salespeople are extremely hesitant to pull out the order form and put it out on the table. For the life of me, I fail to understand why. Getting the order form out, and doing so as early as is appropriate, is an extremely powerful part of the selling process. Not only does your customer see it, they also know exactly what it is for. It’s there for them to agree to do business with you! Getting that piece of paper out presents you with several advantages:

  • If they don’t keel over from the shock of just seeing it, or tell you to put it away, you have already earned the right to proceed to the next step.
  • What better way is there to review the conditions and details associated with investing in your product or service?
  • You should be using your pen to point out each area of the form. Seeing the pen out is also another one of those steps toward providing somebody something to SIGN with. Continue reading “Sales Tip – Adding Conditions & Contingencies To Order Forms”

The Close Is The Natural Culmination To The Sale If … You Have “Earned The Right”

Whenever I am approached by a sales manager or an owner regarding potential sales training gigs, I always ask where they feel that their salespeople can use the most help. Inevitably, the answer almost always is … “They can’t close.” While that is often the visible symptom, the causes themselves tend to run much deeper.

What I have found more often than not is that these salespeople do such a poor job of most everything else in the sales cycle that there is little chance of actually closing the business save for pure dumb luck. Not that persistence and a little dumb luck hurts. Simply put, they have not earned the right to ask their customer for their business. If they had, the successful close would be the natural culmination to the sale.

How does one earn the right to ask the customer for their business? They … Continue reading “The Close Is The Natural Culmination To The Sale If … You Have “Earned The Right””

Sales Tip – Treat Your Prospects As Though They Are Already Your Clients

Quickly! Who do people buy from? They buy from those who they like and who they trust. Who do they like and trust? They like and trust those who treat them with respect and who they feel are looking out for their best interests. End of post:)

Today I wanted to discuss two aspects of the title of this article …

  1. How we might integrate this concept into the selling process and …
  2. Our overall mindset while dealing with prospective clients
The Selling Process – 
Treating your prospects as if they are already your clients, and doing so during the selling process, is a teachable and learned behavior. Much of this hinges on your choice of language used and a great deal of this is very subtle. What is the difference between these to statements? Continue reading “Sales Tip – Treat Your Prospects As Though They Are Already Your Clients”

Sales 101 – Two Of My Best Email Tips

As impersonal as they may be, emails remain a great way to keep in touch with your clients. I particularly like email for one specific reason and that is to let know clients that I am ALWAYS working for them! I’m going to provide you with two of my favorite strategies. Before I do that, I must stress that you must be responsive, and proactive, with your email communications to start with! For those of you who are too busy to return emails, don’t even think about asking me to buy from you … ever! Couldn’t help myself. Pet peeve 🙂

Away we go …

Clients like to be included in correspondence that relates to them – This is particularly effective when you are working to resolve an issue that will  involve soliciting the assistance other parties and especially when said parties are in your organization. Certainly, it can just as easily apply to things like project coordination, seeking bids from third parties, the list goes on and on. The premise is that, when I tell a customer that I am going to work on something for them, I want them to see how hard I am working it. It goes like this … Continue reading “Sales 101 – Two Of My Best Email Tips”

Sales 101 – Always Finish Your Meeting By Scheduling The Next One

You have just finished the best sales presentation of your life yet, you are walking out that door without an order. To make matters worse, the last words out of your prospect’s mouth were “I’ll get back to you.” Maybe they will. More likely they won’t. What are you going to do? Your only reason to go back is to ask if they are ready to buy and you can do that via email or by phone. Dohhhhh!

Never, NEVER leave a meeting without scheduling the next one. How and why are you going to do that? The simple answer is, always have a valid reason to go back and that reason had better include the necessity for a face-to-face meeting. By that I mean, your next meeting can not be accomplished via a phone call, a fax, the postal service, or an email.

What are some very valid reasons for setting another meeting? Continue reading “Sales 101 – Always Finish Your Meeting By Scheduling The Next One”

When An Order Close Is Not A Close

Because it is …. a trial close. I’m flat out terrible at traditional order closing statements and I know a bunch of them. You name it … everything from the “Ben Franklin” to the “Japanese Origami Folding Paper Close”. The really good news is that I never need to bend arms to get the order. I am pretty good at doing the other things right before we even get to that point and I am extremely adept at the art of the trial close.

You’ve maybe seen this acronym … “ABC – Always Be Closing”. For me, that’s a little blunt and a little too old-school. I prefer … “ABTC – Always Be Trial Closing”. So, what’s the difference?

A Close requests an action. An example would be … “Please sign this agreement and there are 10 pages so press hard.” Continue reading “When An Order Close Is Not A Close”