Professional Selling Skills Training: 3-Step Shuffle

Recently, the following question was posed by a conference attendee:

"The discussion for the 3 step shuffle was good to learn. Could tell me again the time lag I should have between the steps? I got the first step, 72 hours after exchanging business cards."

The 3-Step Shuffle is awesome! I use it regularly. I was at an event today and picked up 3 cards and by tomorrow each of the 3 people will have received their first contact. In this case, I'm doing just a "thanks and great to meet you". The second one I'll send out in about 4 more days and it will be an article I found on the web that I'll send out via e-mail. Then, I'll wait a full week to give them a call. Now, I normally like to end with an e-mail, but in this case I'm choosing to end with a phone call because by that time, I want to either get the appointment to meet or be done with them. These 3 have the potential size where I need to move now or not at all.

Professional Selling Skills Training: How is Yours?

Do you spend time on your professional selling skills training? I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to highlight an interesting figure in a recent Business Week Magazine. The article was talking about competition and how in a survey they conducted, the majority of people believe the most competitive employees in a company are in the sales department. (In particular, 38% of the companies surveyed said sales was the most competitive.) That begs the question: If companies, in general, view sales people this way, how competitive are you when you’re out selling against other sales people? Are you allocating enough resources to developing your professional selling skills?

Prospecting for Clients: Getting Referrals

What does it take to get a customer to give you referrals? You have to ask! Many salespeople don’t ask for referrals because they’re afraid of the customer's response, especially if they suspect the service they’ve been providing them is less than par. You have to ask yourself if this is really the case. The vast majority of times, it is merely a perception that is lingering in the mind of the salesperson. I like to recommend that sales managers create a sale referral period during which they require each salesperson to contact all of their customers to ask for referrals. For the majority of salespeople, asking for referrals is as difficult as cold-calling. Unless it’s mandated, it won’t happen.

Sales Training Tip #149: Forget the Sales Materials

If you can’t make every phase of a sales call without using any sales materials, then you don’t know your business. High-performing sales people routinely prospect and close sales without the aid of any sales materials.