Sales Training Tip #190: Google Alerts

Do you have a customer you want to keep track of when they are in the news? Go to www.Google.com/alerts and enter the name of the company. Google will send you an email anytime their search engine picks up the name. This useful information will help keep you "in the know" with your newsworthy clients!

Sales Training Tip #189: PBJ Selling

Have you ever considered that your customer is like a PB & J sandwich. The difference is, in sales, that the PB & J stand for Perception, Belief, and Justification. The perception your customer has of you and your company becomes their belief and justification for why they do or do not buy from you. Ponder how you can correctly communicate who you are the next time you're eating lunch!

Sales Training Tip #188: Vacation Reading

Use your vacation time to do some reading about your industry. Then, when you return, be sure to update your key customers with some of the insights you picked up.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Consultative Selling is More Than Networking

Consultative Selling is all about dealing with customers. Sales Development is having an on-going process to build your sales volume. Neither of these definitions say anything about networking with your friends in the business. Recently, I've seen several situations where very competent, experienced sales people have had trouble closing sales. The reason for their slump is because of who they're calling on. Veteran sales people often wind up in trouble because of the amount of time they spend talking to their friends in the industry, believing that if they just stay in contact with these people, their numbers will take off. This big mistake is one of the primary reasons why seasoned veterans often finish their careers on a sour note. My advice: stay in touch with the people you know, but, at the end of each week, ask yourself how many new people you've talked with and have been able to add to your prospect list.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Sales Calls and the Myth of Preparation

We all know that sales calls are the lifeblood of anyone in the Sales industry. Sales training programs will tell you that preparation is a key part of any successful sales call. I don't necessarily believe that. I've recently been working with a number of sales people who spend all of their time preparing to make calls, but in the end, wind up making very few. They simply run out of time because they take too long to prepare. One of the things I firmly believe is that there's no better time than right now to make a sales call. In other words, don't put off making one just because you don't have all of your stuff together. If you do, you'll never make the numbers you need. (The only exception I find to this rule is if you're selling to an incredibly narrow customer base. But, don't kid yourself, you're probably not in this situation!)

If you're a supervisor, challenge your sales team to make sales calls even though they may not be fully prepared. Keep in mind that what I am advocating is the need to push ourselves to continuously find ways to eliminate unnecessary time in our sales process.

If you're a salesperson, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the % of phone calls I make where I actually talk to someone? The vast majority of our phone calls wind up in voice mail anyway, so really all we need to make the call is a compelling point of interest to leave on the message.
• Do I have enough questions I can ask the customer in person to get them to reveal some great information that will guide me through the sales process? Your answer must be "yes".

In the end, I believe many people spend a lot of time preparing to make sales calls only to wind up not making them because they're afraid of rejection. If this is the case (and I believe it is 90% of the time), then you need to take a step back to consider the following:

• Do you truly believe in what you're selling?
• More importantly, do you have the passion to sell?

If you can't answer "yes" to both, then you will never be successful and you might as well start looking for another job.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Questions and Consultative Selling

There are so many varied definitions of "consultative selling" that have surfaced over the past several years that it makes me sick.

My definition? Consultative selling is asking questions that allow the customer to reveal their true needs, thus allowing you to work with them to help develop a solution that goes beyond solving their basic needs / pain to, ultimately, achieving a higher level of success or satisfaction. It begins with the questions you ask and the quality of the listening you do. It concludes with you delivering what will exceed the expectations of the consumer, regardless of what you initially expected.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Consultative Selling is Like a PBJ

I'd like to elaborate on my belief that Consultative selling is like a PB & J sandwich. Keep in mind that the PB & J stand for Perception, Belief, and Justification. The customer you're selling to will always develop a perception of you based on what you're saying and how you're saying it. This perception if often formed from things you would never expect. From their perception, they then determine their belief. This is where the customer takes great leaps of faith for reasons beyond anything you might have said or implied. It is not only very difficult to modify, but nearly impossible to correct. Their belief is then used to justify their decision whether or not to buy from you. It is scary to consider that the customer not only bases their decision, but also your livelihood on their shallow perceptions. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens each and every time you're out making a sales call. Remember, think PB & J: Perception becomes Belief which becomes Justifciation.

Sales Training Tip #187: Sound Like a "Solution-Provider"

When you are calling on a new large client, remember you will always be referred to the person who you sound the most like. If you're selling high-tech products, you'll get referred to the IT department if you sound like a "techie." However, if you sound like a solution-provider, you'll be far more likely to find yourself speaking with the end user.

Sales Training Tip #186: What Not to Ask the CEO

When selling to a CEO, never ask them how their business is doing. The CEO expects you to already know! By asking a general question of this type, it communicates that you haven't done your homework.

Sales Training Tip #185: What Have You Learned?

What have you learned this week about the industry you're a part of? If you aren't continually educating yourself, you will soon find that you are no longer being viewed as an industry expert.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Consultative Selling and Negotiating

Consultative selling often involves negotiating and one of the common skills that both consultative selling and negotiating require is ensuring that you're providing a level of self-confidence to the person you're speaking with. This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but your ability to allow the other person to feel confident in their position will allow you to more quickly reach a successful outcome. To help them feel more self-assured, use their first name when you speak to them. Additionally, compliment them on their comments and use their remarks to shape your responses.

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?

Sales Training Tip #183: Listen With Your Eyes

Listening begins by giving the customer eye contact. Looking them in the eye communicates that you are attentive to what they are saying.

Sales Training Tip #182: Listen For A Change

Listen for changes in your customer's voice. A change in their vocal pitch or tone will often come just prior to them either throwing out an objection or agreeing to an offer.

Sales Training Tip #181: Sell the Benefits

Price is only a factor when you haven't done a good enough of a job selling the benefits. And, if you haven't sold the benefits, you haven't done a good enough of a job listening. There is a direct correlation between the price you get and the listening you do.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Sales Compensation and Sales Commissions

How do you think a salesperson should be compensated? How important is commission for a salaried employee? Our staff of 4 sells small-ticket food items and we used to have trouble with them competing against our outside sales reps. Our Sales Manager moved them to straight hourly, but I am looking for an incentive.

This is a great question recently submitted by a reader of "Selling Tips From The Sales Hunter." Here's my perspective:

Salespeople who are not compensated based on their level of productivity are not salespeople...they're "order-takers". I'm a firm believer that every person in an organization should have a portion of their pay based on their performance and / or the performance of the entire team or company.

If what the salesperson is compensated is determined by their individual performance, then their commissions / bonus should be approximately 75% of their individual performance plus the remaining based on the overall performance of the team or company. No matter how much a person may believe their sales are their own, it still is important to keep a sense of "team" across the entire company.

If a person is part of a sales team or if what they do is dependent on the activities of a number of other people, then they should be paid approximately 25% based on their performance and 75% based on what the team does.

The total commission should be at least 25% of their total compensation if you expect any kind of behavior impact from the commission. I encourage bonus / commission structures to be in excess of 25% of the total compensation only if management can control sales swings and the base pay will cover basic needs.

Now, a final comment: I am not a big proponent of short-term incentive games unless they are done very, very rarely. Too often, I see sales teams achieve a significant goal based on the ability to earn an incentive trip or some other prize. It's important to ensure you don't have so many incentive programs that people wind up only responding if there is one. When this occurs, all you will have done is increase the cost of doing business without guaranteeing an incremental increase in business.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Selling Tips Being Put to Use

Each week, I send out a sales tip to help people develop their selling skills and, in turn, I regularly receive emails back from people with their comments on how they're using them. Below is the response I received from a reader in the DFW area. He's done a great job of not just reading the tips, but putting them to use. Special thanks to Bob Lazenby of the Legacy Realty Group for these. Here's just some of what Bob sent me:

"QUESTION or THOUGHT IN A PROSPECT'S MIND: What Makes You Different? In two sentences, can you explicitly define what makes you different from your competition? Great salespeople can!

RESPONSE (TWO SENTENCES): We show clients how to reduce facilities costs by as much as 20% - 30% or more! Would you like to know how we do that?

IF PROSPECT SAYS YES… “Give me a couple of times THIS WEEK or NEXT that we can MEET and I’LL SHOW YOU

AT the MEETING: Theme is… Proactive vs Reactive

OPENING STATEMENT:
Those that have TIME on their side get the BEST DEALS
· PROACTIVE approach;
· In almost all cases they meet or exceed their financial EXPECTATIONS.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies address their facility needs on a REACTIVE basis;
· They seldom meet their financial EXPECTATIONS
· Often ends up as a financial disaster. "

Bob has sent me even more examples and I want to thank him for doing so.

A giant plug for Bob and the Legacy Realty Group in the DFW area: If you're looking for commercial property, give Bob a call....www.LegacyRealtyGroup.com.

Thanks, Bob, and all the best to you and your entire team!!