sales tips & articles

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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* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
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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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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.


 

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

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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.
 

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

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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.


 

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

Enter your details at the top of the page or click here

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.


 

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

Enter your details at the top of the page or click here

If you are just starting out in business or in sales here are some quick tips and tricks you can use to get you in sales mindset, develop a sales language and start selling !

1. Be yourself
2. Have you ever bought anything of anyone you didn’t like?
3. People buy people, not companies so relax and just be yourself
4. Having a good Introduction/Elevator Story ready
5. This will help to give you confidence whenever you go into networking or face to face business meetings. Your introduction should only be around one minute and include who you are, what you do, your experience (if relevant) and what is the benefit of doing business you.
6. Ask questions, ask questions, ask questions
7. It’s the only way you will know what your clients really want. When you know what they want you will know how you can help them.
8. Think about the benefits of your business and its products and services. What makes then unique or superior to your competitors?
9. Why do I need to buy your products or services? How will they make a difference to me?
10. Talk more about the benefits or the ‘why’ elements rather than the features so your clients understand why they would want them.
11. Know where to find new clients
12. Get out there and find your potential clients, don’t wait for them to come to you. Networking is a good place to find clients and there are hundreds of groups around. Try BNI, Chamber of Commerce, and Women’s Network Australia, Australian Institute of Management or type ‘business networking’ into Google.
13. Sales takes time
14. Increasing your confidence in sales and the ability to win new clients takes time, it isn’t easy for everyone, so give yourself some time. Allocate some time each week to focus on building new sales.
15. Follow Up
16. One of the hardest elements of building a business is finding a constant stream of new clients. You have already done the hard work through networking, advertising or marketing so don’t waste it. Make that follow up call now! The biggest complaint that people have in relation to sales is that no one ever followed them up.

 

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* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

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Did you know that the majority of sales leads and enquiries do not get followed up more than once (which could be why your business has a low conversion rate*)?

To improve your sales or that of your sales team, develop a system to regularly check where each one is at and when they were last contacted. If you hold sales meetings, doing it at the beginning or end of each month is perfect.

Here are some statistics that I'm sure you will find most interesting:

• 48% of sales people never follow-up with a prospect
• 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
• 12% of sales people only make 3 contacts and stop
• Only 10% of sales people make more than 3 contacts
• 2% of sales are made on the first contact
• 3% of sales are made on the second contact
• 5% of sales are made on the third contact
• 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
• 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

To ramp up some sales in the next couple of months, go through all the leads you have received over the last 3-6 months and either you or your sales people pick up the phone and call them. You will be surprised how many people haven't done anything, simply because no one has bothered to follow up and they have simply been too busy to do anything about it.


* Your sales conversion rate is how many enquiries you receive vs. how many you convert into customers over a specified time frame. To calculate your sales conversion rate follow this simple formula

Total No. of Sales/ Total No. of Enquiries x 100 = Sales Conversion

e.g. 80 sales / 120 enquiries x 100 = 66.67%

For for every 3 enquiries you will be successful in 1 sale, so you need to have 3 times the amount of your budget (or number of required sales) in your pipeline at any one point in time.

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

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

Enter your details at the top of the page or click here

Looking at your business from a sales perspective and most importantly understanding your business from a client perspective, is one of the most important first steps in sales.

Most people hate being sold to but love the feeling of buying; so the clearer you can explain how your business helps and “what is in it for them” the easier it makes prospective customers to make a buying decision.

The consultative/problem solver approach qualifies and listens to the customer and helps them to buy what they need. The consultative approach focuses on the needs of the customer and how you improve or benefit them in some way.

Every potential prospect that you meet with has a different reason for meeting with you and may also have a range of reasons for using your products and services. These reasons are known as ‘buying reasons’ for the client and are related to what difference you can make.

You cannot see a prospect’s needs; they are inside the prospect and only they can tell you what they are. However, you can be reasonably sure they have a need when they use language like the following:

• I want
• I need
• I’d like to
• We are looking for
• We are interested in
• I wish
• I hope
• What matters is
• It’s important to
• We must

When you have an appointment it is important to listen for and recognise these needs. If you don’t, you risk making incorrect assumptions about what the prospect is looking for and waste time talking about things he or she isn’t interested in. It might sound obvious, but you need to get the prospect talking and you listening, rather than the other way around. I am constantly amazed at how many salespeople sit in front of someone for the first time and never shut up ! A simple measure of how good you are at this is to analyse your appointment; who talked the most?

Remember, if your product, service or business can't

• Improve a current situation
• Saved time or money
• Solve a problem, challenge or frustration, or
• Fulfila need or desire

Why would I want to buy it?

Think of a prospect you are dealing with at the moment, using the reasons above, why would they want to buy your services?

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

If you liked this article, subscribe to our monthly Sales Success ezine. You will learn...

* Easy ways to increase your sales and grow your business
* Simple strategies to sell yourself, even if your not in sales
* How to generate sales easier and quicker!

Enter your details at the top of the page or click here