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!!

Sales Training Tip #180: Your Response to an RFP

Never respond to an RFP (Request For Proposal) with a proposal. Rather, show your confidence in your ability to service them by providing a document titled a "plan" or "working agreement". This does not mean you are giving away your "secret sauce recipe." Keep the content the same as you would for an RFP, but merely change the name.

Sales Training Tip #179: What's Changed?

What's changed about the customer you're currently calling on? If you are unable to determine any of their differences since you last met, then you really haven't taken the time to understand your customer.

Sales Training Tip #178: Stall Tactic

Next time you stall out in a presentation, try asking, "How can I help you achieve your goals?" Not only will it help you refocus your thoughts, but it will also communicate your desire to see the customer succeed.

Sales Training Tip #177: What Makes You Different?

In two sentences, can you explicitly define what makes you different from your competition? Great salespeople can.

Professional Selling Skills Training: Selling to Big Companies

Closing a big sale has never been easy, and when you're trying to close one with a large company, it can be even more difficult. This past week, I shared the stage with a fellow sales professional and I highly recommend her best-selling book to you. Jill Konrath and myself had the opportunity to be part of the Ball State University Sales Symposium. Jill has authored the best-seller, Selling to Big Companies (Kaplan Press). Jump over to Amazon.com and pick up a copy! She does a great job of dispelling a number of myths held by many salespeople about dealing with large companies. Her entire book is based off of her many years of experience being part of a big company and selling to them.

Jill's book is a great compliment to many of the same approaches I've been talking about for years regarding how to increase your closing ratio and, at the same time, increase the size of your average sale. Thanks to Jill for writing such a great book on a key subject!

Sales Training Tip #176: Great Probing Questions

When you are seeking additional information from a customer, consider asking, "What goals are you trying to achieve?" Once they answer, immediately follow it with, “How are you going to achieve them?” Not only does it help you find out the information you need, but it also communicates your desire to help them be successful.

Professional Selling Skills Training: 15 Tips to Voicemail Survival

1. If your goal is to get the phone call returned, don’t leave information that would allow the person to make up their mind. Add a call-to-action to your message by providing a key date or something of interest that will encourage the person to return the call. You have to create a reason for them to call you back.

2. Repeat your phone number twice. If the person can’t quickly write your number down, you’ve given them a perfect reason to not call back.

3. Avoid asking ask the person to call you back at a certain time. This provides them with an excuse not to call you.

4. Never state in the message that you will plan to call them back. Again, this only gives the person an excuse to ignore your message.

5. Messages left on a Friday afternoon are the least likely to be returned. For most people, Monday mornings are very busy and, as a result, only high–priority activities will get their immediate attention.

6. Do not leave voicemail messages at odd hours of the night. Most voicemail systems offer a time stamp and the person hearing the message will immediately suspect you really did not want to talk to them.

7. The best hours to leave voicemail messages are from 6:45 AM to 8:00 AM and from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM. Aggressive people are usually working during these time periods, and the person receiving your message could potentially view you as one.

8. Wisely use time zone changes to make as many calls as possible during the optimal voicemail periods listed in the previous tip.

9. Voicemail messages are an excellent way to introduce yourself to a person. Be personable, yet professional, and link your message to something of interest to the person you are calling (such as another person or event). The recipient may view your message as a waste of time if you have no purpose other than getting your name in front of them.

10. When leaving a message with multiple points, be sure to immediately disclose how many you will be making. This will prevent the recipient from accidentally fast-forwarding or deleting it before it is completely heard.

11. If you can’t say it briefly, don’t say it at all. Voicemail is not “story time”. Leaving a long message is an invitation to have the entire message skipped. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds.

12. When leaving your phone number, do not leave your website address as well. This will give the person an opportunity to make a decision about you without calling you back.

13. Leave a “PS” at the end of your message. A “PS” is a very quick, additional piece of information that will connect with the person.

14. Mention the person’s first name at least twice in the message, but don’t use their last name. Doing so comes across as very impersonal.

15. Refer to a mutual acquaintance in your message as a way of connecting with the recipient. (Caution: Make sure they think positively of that person!).

Professional Selling Skills Training: "Learn / Teach / Sell” Yourself to More Sales

Every sales call you make needs to include the “Learn, Teach, Sell” concept. Today’s customer has many options available to them. Rarely are we in a position to sell to a customer something that is so unique and compelling that they have no other choice but to buy from us. To help create a competitive edge in the marketplace, we must find ways to distinguish our selling process from our rival’s.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to use each call to “learn” something about the customer and to “teach” them something about the business. When we take the time to both “learn” from and “teach” the customer something, then we have earned the right to “sell” them. This is a consultative selling approach.

“Learning” something about the customer is absolutely essential if we are going to be in a position to help identify their true needs. Therefore, the questions you ask must allow you to gain information that can be used either in the current call or at a later time with the customer. An example might be finding out from a customer what their financial limits are.

“Teaching” is the way we can help the customer become more qualified in their position and, in turn, make better decisions. Teaching them something should not be centered on the products or services we offer, but on the industry and business practices. The key is to provide them with practical information. By doing so, you will demonstrate that you are interested in helping them be more successful, rather than just selling them something.”

Selling” is the final step. Naturally, we want to sell our products on every call. However, reality reminds us that many times there are objections and other issues that must be overcome before the customer will buy from us. Still, it is essential for us to do on every sales call, whether it is simply selling our integrity, our listening skills, or our personal style.

In the end, we have been successful if we have earned the right, privilege, honor, and respect to call on the customer again. This is best achieved when we’ve taken the time to learn from them and teach them information of benefit.