sales tips & articles

Improving success on your first call

Karen Andrews - Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Many salespeople looking to improve cold calling techniques tend to focus on the mechanics of the script or how to qualify but fail to look at whether they are getting a commitment from the prospect.

Telling a prospect what want to do and them agreeing, is not commitment, it’s just them agreeing to your process. Many sales reps seem happy that someone asks or agrees to be sent information and mistakenly think the prospect is interested and fail to get a commitment to follow up or a next step. More often than not it’s because the sales rep doesn’t want to push it or ruin it by asking for clarity and commitment as to the next steps.

A quick tip – if someone has agreed to receive information, they are not interested they just know it’s the quickest way to get a salesperson off the phone!!

Successful salespeople know that to gain commitment from the first call and get buy in this early in the process tells you so much about the quality of the sale and how quickly it will progress. When a lack of commitment is shown, it sounds warning bells that the prospect may not be that strong.

It’s important to understand that commitment is not the same as someone agreeing with you. Agreeing with what you have said or outlined is simply that – agreeing. Many salespeople make the mistake that because a prospect has agreed with them or even acknowledged the process the salesperson has outlined, that this is commitment.

Commitment is defined as “the act of committing, pledging, or engaging oneself” or “a pledge or promise; obligation”

For example:

Salesperson – “I can get the application form over to you by 3pm and if you get back to me by 5pm, I’ll have it installed by Friday”

Prospect - “Ok thanks, that sounds great”

There is no commitment that the prospect will do what you have said, all they have done is agreed with you.

You could instead try this

Salesperson – “I can get the application form over to you by 3pm, can you get it signed and back to me by 5pm so I can have it installed by Friday”

Prospect - “No, I can’t get it back by 5pm but I can get it back to you by 10am tomorrow morning.”

Here are a couple more ways to ensure your getting commitment from your prospects:

Committing to receive a follow up phone call – agree to date and time

“I know you’re extremely busy and I’ve got a crazy week coming up so why don’t we make an appointment to speak again. How does (insert day and time) suit you?”

Committing to an action – they do something for you prior to the next step or you do something for them
“Ok just so we agree, you will speak to your IT manager and get a copy of the specifications and his agreement in principle, so we can begin to develop the solution when we speak next week – agreed?

Committing to the next step
“Now that you have all agreed on the solution, what are the next steps from your side?

Committing to what they will buy, before they buy it
“I think we have everything covered and I’ll arrange for the paperwork we discussed to be sent over. Once we get the paperwork out of the way, how many licences do you think you will start with?
 
BEWARE!   These techniques will mean you have a lower volume of prospects in your funnel – yes less!!! No longer will your pipeline be full of time wasting, slow and low quality prospects. Instead, your pipeline will be filled with high quality, genuine sales opportunities that are well qualified and committed to the process – so you enjoy a higher rate of sales success.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales process improvement, sales coaching and mentoring.

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Tips to Kickstart your Sales in 2012

Karen Andrews - Monday, January 16, 2012

Did you come back from the New Year break invigorated and inspired to make 2012 your best year yet?

I love the saying "if nothing changes, then nothing changes" so in order to achieve bigger success this year, changes need to be made, and remember, it's not just the business which might need tweaking, ask yourself what you will do differently to achieve your goals this year.

Use these 5 quick tips and get motivated, get active and start taking the steps toward building your success this year.

Set Yearly, Quarterly and Monthly Goals.

What do you want to achieve each and every month? It can be related to sales figures, client numbers, performance, units sold or even the number of networking events & client meetings you would like to have. Ask your salespeople to write a one page plan and list their goals, what they plan to do differently and how they plan on achieving monthly and quarterly targets.

Regularly review progress

If you aren't already, hold weekly sales meetings to review the activity and performance of your team and ensure they are on track with their plans and sales achievements. 

Have you got a 'consistent' process in place to know where you are each month, identify red flags and ensure your salespeople are accurately estimating their potential? Receiving weekly forecasts and a pipeline from each person in the team provides much needed visibility into the future and allows you to provide feedback and take corrective action, if required.

Review your sales process

How easy is it for customers to buy from you? How long does the process take from first meeting to signed order to implementation and how many people get involved? How many leads or customer orders fell out half way through?

The sales process begins when you start discussing a potential opportunity with a new or existing customer. Review each step to streamline the processes and remove unnecessary steps or delays that may have caused the sale to stall or be lost. 

Knowing you are different just isn't enough. You might have the best product or the best servcie in the world but if no one knows about it, it's worthless. Additionally, staff who deal with customers tend to become bogged down in a world of negativitiy,  never ending issues and complaints and will lose sight of all the benefits and positives that the business has to over 

Analyse customer base and improve customer loyalty

The simplest and cheapest way of increasing sales is to look through your client base. Analyse your customer database to discover  what percentage of sales each customer contributed to the overall revenue. Classify your customers into A, B and C level depending on the spend, percentage or value to the business.

With particular focus on your A and B class customers, how loyal do you think they are? When things start to get tough and your competitors are knocking on their door offering savings, will they pay more to stay with you?

How will you demonstrate or communicate the value you bring, over and above what they are paying for?

Dig deeper and analyse what products or services each of your A and B  customers haven't bought and what else they could get some value or benefit from. 

Arrange to visit your customers and discuss their plans for 2012 and what they hope to achieve. Is there any products or services that you have that will assist them or make it easier to achieve? Use the visit to update them on your plans for 2012, how you plan to 'love them' this year, new products or services being introduced or talk about a product or service that they aren't buying that you feel they might get benefit from.

Lastly, let them know that your plans are to grow in 2012 and you would welcome any referrals or introductions.

Be different and yell it from the rooftops

Knowing you are different just isn't enough. You might have the best product or the best servcie in the world but if no one knows about it, it's worthless. Additionally, staff who deal with customers tend to become bogged down in a world of negativitiy,  never ending issues and complaints and will lose sight of all the benefits and positives that the business has to over.

Hold a staff or sales meeting and review the successes and positives from last year. Have a discussion on the differences between your business and the competition, as a group analyse your strengths and weakness vs their strengths and weaknesses. How can you use your strengths to highlight their weaknesses and how will you combat their strenghth over your weakness?

Keep focussed on the positives and discuss what is possible and what can be achieved when everyone stays positive and focused. This will help staff to forget the negatives of last year and see the potential opportunities of the future.

Assist staff who aren't comfortable talking about themselves by discussing ways these benefits and differences can be introduced into the conversation or how they can be used to overcome objections and negotiate. 

Understand and identify what new business you want

In the end, it all comes down to prospecting. When we know what we want, we know how to find it and prospecting is no different.

Don't leave it up to the salespeople to decide what customers your business should have in 2012. Share the new business strategy to the team and discuss what the business plans to do to support them and make the job of prospecting easier and more successful.

And remember................ if nothing changes, then nothing changes. Here's to great selling in 2012.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring.

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3 Factors of Successful Salespeople

Karen Andrews - Friday, June 17, 2011

Harvard Business School came up with 3 factors that makes salespeople successful.

  • Sales Skills
  • Attitude
  • Product/Industry knowledge
It seems quite straight forward, right? What is interesting to note, is how much each of these factors contribute to overall success:
  • Sales skills contributes 10%,
  • Product knowledge        10%, and
  • Having a positive attitude contributes 80% to your success.
I see many people with little to no formal sales training or industry knowledge and are consistenly  high achievers, why? Because they believe in themselves, stay positive and have a fantastic attitude.

I see many people with years of experience in sales and lots of training but they fail to be successful, why? Because they let negativity get in the way, think they know everything, don't like change and things just become too hard. In other words - bad attitude.

It's important to remember these factors when recruiting salespeople; it's not always the most experienced person that will be the most successful or the right fit for your business - it's the person who has the right attitude and shows the right behaviours.

Having a positive attitude is easy when times are good and sales are being made but the true test of success is the attitude you have when things get hard - challenging economy, targets not being met, surrounded by negativity and underachievement.

What attitude do you have today?

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses and sales teams to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring.


 

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Are you boring prospects with your questions?

Karen Andrews - Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Questioning or probing as it is also known, is one of the most important skills you can learn when dealing with prospects and customers. The ability to ask questions that uncover important information about a prospect’s needs, current supply and willingness to change is a strong characteristic of a ‘consultative’ selling approach.

When you ask ‘thinking, open style’ questions it can help you to win new business much quicker and with fewer objections. Additionally, when you help prospects to think about the needs of their business and to really think about current or potential problems or challenges they may face, they start to see you differently and understand the value you can add to them or their business.

This style of questioning provides an opportunity to investigate the prospect's strategies and goals, allowing you to align your product/service with the achievement of their business objectives.

Many prospects have a reluctance to change and think that the way they are doing things is fine. So when you try and tell them what to do or tell them what they are doing is wrong, they can offended and stop listening. However, if you ask questions that ‘probe’ into uncover hidden problems, needs or frustrations, it helps the prospect to realise, that it might be worthwhile investigating this with you further.

As I’ve discussed previously in my article “Are you asking questions that make your prospects think?” there are 2 types of questions: open questions and closed questions. It is very easy to get caught up in asking closed questions, which means you will have to ask a lot of questions to get the information you need and the prospect may feel as though they are being interrogated. Instead, ask open questions, that lets the prospect freely answer and provide you with whatever information they think you need, you can then clarify this by using closed questions.

Open questions need to be asked at different stages of the sale and for different purposes. There are:

  • Information Gathering Questions such as:
‘What do you think is causing the low morale?’
‘How many do you think you’ll be wanting?’

  • Opinion Finding Questions such as:
‘What do you think of that idea?’
‘How does that sound?’
It is better to say, ‘How often does that happen?’ (open) rather than ‘Does that happen often?’ (closed)
  • Closing Questions or asking for commitment:
‘How many would you like; 120 or 130?’
‘When will you have an hour for a presentation?’
‘Is there anyone else who would benefit from being in the presentation?’
‘When would you like to begin, this week or next week?’
At the end of the sale when you are asking for commitment, use might like to use alternatives rather than open questions. For example ‘How many will you need; 100 or 150?’ rather than ‘How many do you need?’

Open questions are used to gather information, closed questions are used to qualify this information and to ensure you have the correct understanding of the situation. This means that you will need to really ‘listen’ and pay attention to the answers for hidden or unclear problems, frustrations, desires and needs.

Happy Selling !

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses and sales teams to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring.


 

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How to increase sales using upselling

Karen Andrews - Monday, November 15, 2010

Upselling your products or services to existing customers is a relatively quick and easy (and lets not forget cheap) way to increase your sales revenue, strengthen customer relationships and increase your value to customers.

Up-selling is when you recommend a better (typically more expensive) product or service to customers and takes place once the sale has been made. The most common example of upselling is McDonalds when they ask you ‘would you like fries with that’ or “would you like to upsize for an extra xx amount?”

It’s easy because the decision to buy has already been made and it’s simple because the customer is right in front of you. When you provide recommendations based on their needs, then you are increasing the value to the customer.

It’s important to be specific, don’t ask the customer ‘is there anything else you need’ because at this point they don’t know what they need. Make suggestions based on the most likely item that the customer will want or need and why you think they will need it. Only recommend what the customer genuinely needs, not just what you want to sell them; otherwise you will come across as a pushy salesperson and nobody likes a pushy salesperson.
Here is a great example that I witnessed over the weekend -

I was in a book shop when a lady was at the counter making a purchase. After the purchase the shop assistant asked the customer “have you read ‘x’ book, it’s amazing and if you like what you have now, you will really love this one. The customer replied “no” so the sales assistant went over and picked out the book. After about a minute of flicking through some pages, the customer bought the book.

Simple right?

One of the biggest mistakes people make in cross-selling or upselling is assuming that the customer won’t want it or can’t afford it. This is simply based on fear. Let your customers make that decision and you will be amazed at the results.

Remember; if don’t ask, you don’t get. Here are a couple more examples:

  • If you provide a service you might like to suggest a 3 or 12 month option rather than a one off transaction. You might also like to recommend purchasing relevant templates or e-books.
  • If you provide IT or computer services you might like to suggest an additional back-up service or ongoing maintenance contracts rather than a reactive ad-hoc break/fix service.
  • If you sell products such as hair or beauty, recommend a moisturiser or shampoo product that will enhance the treatment they have just had. 
  • If you provide training you could recommend 1-on-1 follow-up sessions to ensure the new skills are being used and to address any questions or challenges that have arisen.
  • Providing free samples is another great way of getting customers to try something new.
Use upcoming promotions or incentives as an excuse to recontact customers, for example “Hi ….. I just thought I would give you a quick call and let you know that the product you normally buy is on sale at the moment so if you would like to buy some now, you will save x amount”

Spend ten minutes and list out your main products or services - what add-on products could you sell after a customer has made a purchase?

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.

 

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Increase sales with product bundling

Karen Andrews - Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Product bundling is combining two or more complimentary products or services together that creates differentiation and offers greater value to the customer. The key to packaging your products and services is to ensure that the package price is less than buying all the individual items separately.

A bundle of products is sometimes referred to as a package deal and a well known example of this is the fast food industry 'meal deal' where you can buy burger, fries and coke for a cheaper price than purchasing all items individually.

Product bundling has many advantages apart from selling more products such as the cost savings and efficiencies in your business by selling multiple products in the one transaction, increased perceived value and customer loyalty.

Providing a bundled solution increases the perceived value of your offer and creates customer loyalty because the need to go elsewhere for other products is reduced.

Typically a bundled offer will include a product or service that has a high value but doesn’t get repeat purchased that often. When you bundle this with products or services that need to be repeat purchased you are turning what would have been a one-off purchase (or even a one-off customer) into repeat business.

Additionally, when you add-on complimentary products or services the price reduction is seen to be in the add-on products which means you can maintain the pricing point of the main product. For example:

• Selling computers and offering a start-up ‘start-up’ package that includes software, training and installation. Add-on items that are relatively cheap to provide but greatly increase the value of the offer.

  • A Consultant offering their services for a fixed fee per month (say $1000) and includes an additional service for a total fee of ($1500). To get both of these services the normal price might be $1800 per month.
  • Offering free delivery for orders over a certain amount
  • Selling beauty products and bundling a cleanser, moisturiser and an eye cream.
  • A travel agent selling a holiday offering a reduction on travel insurance for all bookings over a certain amount.
  • Offering web design with an additional offer of HTML newsletters and ongoing monthly email subscription for a reduced price
  • A lawn mowing service that offers tree trimming or rubbish removal for a small additional fee
Think about your business; what high value products can be paired with a lower value product to increase the value of the sale but also increase the value offered to the client.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.
 

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How to write and present proposals

Karen Andrews - Thursday, August 19, 2010

When it comes time to provide pricing it is important that you provide enough information to allow your prospects to make an ‘informed decision’.

To make an informed decision it is important to provide information not just on the proposed solution but the value and benefits they can expect by dealing with your company. Don’t assume that if you have already mentioned them or discussed them, they will remember because they won’t.

When you provide this information decision makers can weigh up the value received vs. the cost. If you only provide the solution and the cost then the decision will be made purely on the cost.

The value and benefits you include also helps to explain why you are more expensive than a competitor.

Presenting in personal will also shorten the time it takes to get a decision and will greatly improve your success rate

When you provide this information decision makers can weigh up the value received vs. the cost. If you only provide the solution and the cost then the decision will be made purely on the cost.

The value and benefits you include also helps to explain why you are more expensive than a competitor.

When writing your proposal it is important to include the following information:

Current Situation or Executive Summary - bullet points or in paragraph form this is your understanding of the problem, the need and the goal. This should be tied in with the needs that you uncovered earlier on in the process.

The Solution – you’re proposed solution to the problem, the need and the goal.

The Benefits – what value and benefit can they expect by using your business. Don’t list all your benefits; only include those that are relevant to the prospects needs.

The Price – it is recommended that you provide more than one alternative with your pricing. This provides choices and helps your customers to ‘buy’ the solution they feel is the best fit for them. The alternatives you suggest could be more or less quantity, annual fee rather than pay by the month or a discount for buying 2 services rather than 1.

Important Note:

Building relationships and establishing trust is an important component to winning new business and it is difficult to do this over the phone. Presenting your proposal in person provides an opportunity to continue building the relationship and develop trust between you and the decision maker.

Presenting in personal will also shorten the time it takes to get a decision and will greatly improve your success rate

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.


 

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How to run a meeting with a prospect

Karen Andrews - Thursday, August 19, 2010

The purpose of the first meeting or discussion is to build rapport with your potential client and uncover as much relevant information about the business and their needs. It is also a chance for you to provide a brief introduction to your business and its benefits. Your goal is to determine if there is a need for or interest in your products and services and to get progress the sale to the next stage.

It is a well known fact that ‘people buy people’; we always deal with people we know, like and trust. For this reason it is always recommended that (where possible) you meet with prospects and customer in person to discuss their requirements. Additionally, when you meet prospects face to face it will not only help speed up the sale process but will help you to get more people saying yes.

The objective of the meeting is to determine ‘is there a need or interest for your product or service and would they be interested in receiving pricing?’

The way to determine this is through questioning, however, having purpose and a basic outline to your meetings will help you to stay on track, improve your confidence and keep to the objective.

When you meet with or talk to your prospects for the first time, it is important to include:

• The purpose of the meeting and what you would both like to achieve
• An introduction and background on your business and it’s benefits
• Questions that will help the prospect or customer realise a ‘need’ or desire to improve
• A call to action that progresses the sale to the next stage i.e. preparing a quote or proposal
• The next step

When you know this information you are ‘qualifying’ the prospect to ensure there is a need and interest in progressing the sale, however, it will also identify (very early in the sales process) if there is no need or interest, which is OK too. It is always better to know this after the first meeting so you don’t waste valuable time and effort chasing prospects that have little to no interest in using your products and services.

Note

It is important to include an introduction and background on your business that explains the benefits and value you can add and that gives prospects the confidence to do business with you. Your prospects may not directly ask you but they want to know how long you have been in business (or in the industry) and whether you are still going to be there in 6 months time. When you cover this information in your first interactions it will reduce objections and delays later on in the sales process.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.


 

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Improving sales team performance

Karen Andrews - Thursday, July 29, 2010

When dealing with clients, a common situation that I come across is lack of activity and lack of accountability in sales teams which leads to lack of sales. The business is owner is stressed and frustrated not just because the sales aren’t coming in but because they simply don’t have the time to spend with salespeople or effectively manage the team. In some cases the business owner simply doesn’t know what to do.

  • Does any of this sound familiar to you?
  • I don't know what my salespeople do every day
  • They keep telling me the same thing every week but no sales are being closed
  • My sales people are meeting their weekly or monthly sales targets
  • There is no new business coming in, it's all from existing clients?
  • No one seems to picking up the phone and cold calling
  • I'm not sure what to say to them or how to manage them
  • I don't have time, nor want to manage them
  • Our sales meetings seem to drag on forever
If you’re experiencing any of the above, we can help you to uncover why your salespeople aren't selling and what needs to be done to improve the situation. We call this "Good Cop, Bad Cop" Sales Management.
  • We create the change
  • We save you time
  • We have the tough conversations, and
  • We are the bad cop
So you get to be the good cop and keep a positive relationship with the staff.

If you’re not in a position to utilize a service like ours, here are some tips that might help you:

Ensure that each salesperson clearly understands what is expected of them each and every week in terms of new business activity (cold calls/meetings), customer visits, quotes generated or sales made.
Hold weekly sales meetings and discuss what meetings/calls were made the previous week, what is planned for this week and what sales can be expected.
Bring up and discuss objections or stalling that the sales team may be experiencing with customers and brainstorm solutions as a team.
Provide coaching and mentoring support in any form and suggest that you visit customer or prospects together.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.


 

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The Consultative Selling Approach

Karen Andrews - Thursday, July 29, 2010

Believe it or not, the best way to make sales is not to talk about how wonderful a product or service is or how great the features are because your prospects and your customers simply aren’t interested.

If you really want to be a successful and professional salesperson the best way to achieve that is to master the art of consultative selling.

Consultative selling qualifies and listens to the customer to help them to buy what they need. It focuses on the needs of the customer and how to improve or benefit them in some way. It is the complete opposite to traditional methods of selling because it isn’t about what the salesperson wants to sell them; it is about what the customer wants or needs to buy.

It a common fact that most people dislike being sold to but love the feeling and power of buying so the easier we make it for prospects to buy, the easier it is to win them as customers.

People buy from people they trust and who understand their issues. If you can get customers to think about the needs of their business and to really think about current or potential problems or challenges they may face, they start to see you differently and understand the value you can add to them or their business. This leads to long term profitable relationships rather than short term sales.

There are many times when prospects and customers know what their needs are. However, it is more than likely that they are not only unaware of having any needs for your product but also insist they are perfectly happy with how they are the moment and the last thing they want to do is;

  • Change suppliers
  • Spend money or increase investment
  • Try anything new
Your job is to help your customers and prospect uncover needs they may not already be aware of or to simply consider an alternative to what they are doing now and the way to do this, is through questioning.

Questioning is an important component of consultative selling and the goal is to ask intelligent, high level questions that helps customers to think about their current situation and identify what they are looking for.

Think of consultative selling in terms of a visit to the Doctor. When you visit a Doctor, one of the first things they will do is ask you questions to identify your symptoms (fact finding/uncovering the need). Even if you tell them what you think the symptoms are, they continue to ‘probe’ and ask more questions to ensure they have a full understanding of your problems.

Once the Doctor has all the critical information they diagnose your problem and provide solutions which may be in the form of a prescription or seeing a specialist (providing a solution and the next steps).

If the Doctor doesn’t uncover all the relevant and important information, they will mis-diagnose your problem and provide the wrong solution which can be extremely dangerous.

Imagine how you would feel if the Doctor didn’t ask you any questions or listen to you but simply started talking and assume they knew what was wrong with you. Would you consider them to be an experienced, trustworthy, professional?

Consultative selling is no different, if you don’t uncover the real needs and the real issues of your prospects and customers you run the risk of providing the wrong solution or one that has little to no value to them.

This sales article was written by Karen Andrews, Director of Shine Sales Solutions, a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert that works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and virtual sales management.


 

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