Professional Selling Skills Training: Prospecting and Cold-Call Selling

Every company needs to have some type of sales development program. It is essential for small businesses, but the idea of having one is often something they can't imagine. Therefore, the end result is that the business remains small because it can't attract enough new customers to grow.

I've seen a number of studies which all say that the number one reason small businesses fail is lack of money. In my opinion, it's a lack of customers. This past week, I had a chance to talk to a networking group comprised of small business owners. My conversation with them confirmed this opinion even more.

Every small business must be committed to spending a percentage of their time and revenue looking for new customers, all while continuing to serve their existing ones. The easiest way for a small business owner to do this is to dedicate the first 45 minutes of every day to doing nothing but prospecting. I believe that if you don't prospect first thing in the morning, you're far less likely to do it any other time of the day. By not designating this to the first part of the work day, you will find yourself challenged for time and making compromises. When this happens, the most likely thing to get cut is prospecting / cold-calling because it's probably the least enjoyable task.

If you are interested in some tips to ensure success in your prospecting, I recently posted a new article on my website and I encourage you to read it. Visit www.TheSalesHunter.com, click "articles", and you'll see it listed towards the bottom.

Sales Training Tip #184: The 3 Letters of Cold Calling

The 3 letters of cold calling are "C I C". They stand for Client, Industry, Competitors. Make sure you know who the client is, the industry they compete in, and who their competitors are before you call on them.

Video Sales Training Tips

Sales Training Tips from The Sales Hunter are now available on YouTube. If you're looking for a quick way to gain new sales presentation tips and fresh ideas to help sell more, check them out. More importantly, encourage others to view them! Also, we'd appreciate your comments on YouTube. You can access them by following the link:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=The+sales+hunter+mark+hunter

Professional Selling Skills Training: What is Consultative Selling?

Consultative selling is all about developing a solution for the customer that is beyond what they normally would have been thinking about doing. It is not just listening to the customer to find out what they need, nor is it recanting to the customer what they say they need. Consultative selling is all about asking questions and getting the customer to open up in a manner that allows you to put the pieces together and find a solution that not only benefits the customer, but brings value to them.
The best way to determine if you're practicing consultative selling is to ask yourself this simple question: Is the solution I'm providing my customers beyond the scope of what they would have determined as the best one if I was not working with them?