Sales Training Tip #153: Holiday Planning

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s time to think about how you intend to service your clients during the busy period from Thanksgiving through Christmas and the New Year. Plan now to determine how you and your counterparts will provide the best service possible everyday.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Tracking Your Sales Time

Fortune Magazine (Oct. 16 edition) has a great interview with Jim Donald, CEO of Starbucks. In the article, Jim talks about how he charts his time by month to determine how he is spending it. I've been talking about this for years...for sales people to truly perform at the highest level, it's important to measure how your time is spent. Now I feel vindicated! When a CEO of a high-profile company advocates doing it, you know it makes sense. If you haven't read the article or read some of my material, here's what you need to do: Track your time by key activity for an entire month. The objective is not to determine the total hours, but the % of time you spend on an activity. In the case of sales, the activities need to be sales-focused, not administration, meetings, or anything that isn't truly helping you either keep a sale or make a new one.

Sales Training Tip #152: Mail As A Sales Tool

Mailing your customer or prospect a letter is still a viable means of sharing information and often it will get more “eyeball” time than an email will. The downside to sending stuff this way is that it may take the reader a week to see it because of the infrequency with which many people actually read their mail.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Reaching C-Level People

A recent question was posed of "The Sales Hunter":

"I call almost exclusively on C-level people. Getting their attention, response and return calls is really an issue. Any thoughts on the virtue of e-mail vs snail mail vs telelphone?"

The best way to reach C-level people is to use every technique: voice mail, e-mail, regular mail, fax, etc. It is very important that you not allow yourself to become dependent on any single method since what you might think is the best means may not be one they pay any attention to. Email, for instance, might be the easiest, but with the level of spam filters in place, it's amazing what doesn't go through. Keep in mind that one of the main reasons to communicate with c-level people through multiple methods is to allow the gatekeeper to get used to seeing you. This is another reason not to be sending a ton of sales materials to them no matter how good you think they are. The key is to send the c-level person information they will find helpful in their job. I like to send industry articles, information regarding changes in government regulations, and other things they will find beneficial. By sending this type of information, they will begin to think of you in a different light.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Sales Prospecting Perils

Closing a sale with a prospect does not mean it's time to cut your margin. As we get close to the end of the year, there are a large number of sales people scrambling to make their numbers and it's tempting to start cutting margins. Don't do it, no matter how desperate you are. It's amazing how as soon as you cut your margin once, you'll come back and do it again, and again, and again. I know I've said this before, but it's an issue worth repeating. To avoid cutting your margin, first, sell to the customer's needs and benefits and, second, sell while you have time on your side. We don't have the space here to elaborate on this but I'll make sure I add more to this in the weeks ahead.

Sales Training Tip: Why Tips Don’t Work

Last week, a salesperson contacted me to say that their sales were not growing despite having read a number of sales tips that they believed really fit their sales needs. After spending a couple of minutes talking to the person, I helped them realize that they had been merely thinking about the sales training tips, not really putting them into use. Unfortunately, I’ve heard this issue many times before. Often salespeople like what they hear and know what they need to do, but, in the end, fail to do anything about it. It's imperative that you don’t just read or think about something. Get out there and do it! (Gee, isn’t that what a certain shoe company says to do?)

Sales Training Tip #151: Low "Trial" Closes

When you’re about to "trial" close a customer, be careful not to mention anything that may come across as an amount or quantity less than what you want the buyer ultimately to buy.

Prefessional Selling Skills Training: How’s Your Sales Development Coming?

What are you doing to help your sales development? Or, do you even have a personal sales development program to help you grow your business? We just kicked off "The Sales Hunter" Sales Development Program and I'd like to encourage you to check it out and sign up right away. What makes this program so good is that it is delivered online so you can benefit from it whenever and wherever you like. The price is even better: $17.00 a month! It's a steal, but I wanted to make sure the cost would not be an excuse for not taking advantage of it. When you visit our website (www.TheSalesHunter.com), follow the link at the top and you’ll be on your way to improving your sales!

Sales Training Tip #150: Strength of Your Voice

Listen carefully to your voice, especially when you are talking about price or any issue you’ve been struggling with. Your voice will often reveal nervousness in those situations. Sharp buyers listen for this and will leverage this weakness against you.

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.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Size of Sales Pipeline

Professional Selling Skills Training: Is there a formula people can use to determine how big their sales pipeline needs to be? Your pipeline should always contain as many contacts as it takes to replace all of your business during the current sales cycle. For example, if you’re currently doing business with 25 customers and it takes six months to close a sale, then you would need to either have at least 50 prospects in your pipeline or enough prospects that would bring in the same amount of business to replace your existing business. Additionally, a quick rule of thumb is if your sales process takes more than six months, you need to add the number you need by the number of months above six times your base number. So, for a nine month sales cycle, take the base number of prospects you need (for example: 50) and add another 30% (9 months - 6 months = 3 months). In this case, you would add another 15 prospects.

Prospecting for Clients: Timeline

Prospecting for Clients: How do you know when it’s right to stop calling on what you thought was a perfect prospect? You never ever stop calling on a prospect! Rather, you slow the process down to ensure that you don’t waste your time. The key to determining when they’re no longer a good prospect is if they’ve stopped sharing with you crucial information or information that would not be readily available to others. Prospects who are turning back into suspects are many times those people who will continue to be courteous to you, but won’t extend you any new information or give you their best time. If you decide they’re no longer a hot prospect, then move the person further down in your sales process and let your communication with them be through your on-going marketing campaigns. At a later time, you can leave them a voice mail message asking them to call you back. If they don’t, then certainly they’re still a suspect. If they do call you back, don’t rush to schedule a live meeting. Rather, use the phone call as a way to see if they’re willing to provide you with some information, etc. If they quickly provide you some, then consider them back on the prospect list. If they don’t, then keep them on your suspect / marketing list.

Prospecting for Clients: Handling Hesitation

Prospecting for Clients: How do you deal with the prospect who is hesitant to make a decision?
First, you have to go back and ask yourself if you really know what their buying timeline is and if the person you’re talking to is qualified to buy. You then have to focus in on two areas: the customer’s pressure points and their decision drivers. Let’s look at both of these for a moment. If a customer truly has a pressure point, then they will buy. But often what happens is that our questions aren’t tough enough to enable the customer to understand the magnitude of their pressure point. Remember, the key is you can tell the customer all you want, but until the customer says it’s a pressure point, they won’t believe it. Second point, you have to know the customer’s decision drivers. Again, you have to ask yourself if you really know how they make a decision. You have to be asking questions that many times are not related to the sale you’re currently working on, but are designed to get the customer talking about other decisions they’ve made. When you get them talking about other decision they’ve made and how they made them, you can determine what their decision drivers are and how to leverage them.

Sales Training Tip #148: C-Suite Is Focused on Solutions

When you’re dealing with anyone in the C-Suite (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.), make sure your focus is all about providing solutions. Don’t waste your time dealing with price because it is not a factor in a C- Suite discussion. As I like to say, “Leaders are looking for solutions. Company managers are looking for price.”

Sales Training Tip #147: Get Motivated on a Daily Basis!

Beginning this week, The Sales Hunter Daily Video Motivator is available to you for free! By watching these 45 second clips of practical, ready-to-use strategies for sales success, you will be motivated to jump start your day. These links will be updated on a weekly basis and will appear at the top of each weekly Sales Hunting Tip or via our website. Spend a minute getting motivated and then, get out there and sell!

Professional Selling Skills Training: Search Engines on the Move

Recently, I’ve been amazed at the differences that are beginning to appear in the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Each seems to be tweaking their processes more and more so their results for a particular search can be dramatically different. For those of us in sales, it means we have to sharpen our thinking even more when we are trying to leverage the effectiveness of our websites. If we’re using search engines to help us sell, we must now be careful to not limit our queries to a single search engine.

Sales Training Tip #146: Decision-Maker Calls

How many decision-maker calls do you make each day? Salespeople often think they’re making sales calls when all they’re really doing is talking to random people. The focus of your selling time must be on talking to decision-makers (those who can truly buy).