Sales Tips And Secrets
Understanding your customer is so important that large corporations spend hundreds of millions annually on market research.
People buy for their own reasons, not for yours. Until you know your customer's reasons for wanting, or not wanting, to buy your product or service...you're in the dark! It doesn't matter how many reasons you give for believing your product or service is a great buy, they will mean nothing unless your customer has solid reasons of his own for wanting to do business with you.
Customers face new problems every day that can radically alter their needs for your products/services. The key is to stay in contact with your PB’s (Probable Buyers)...and ALWAYS ask questions to learn where they are in terms of needing your product/service.
You need to be able to use questions to stir up buying emotions. Improving your questioning techniques will help you to more easily find out what it is your PB wants, why they want it and what they intend to do with it. Master this important selling technique and closing will be so easy, it’s almost a non-event!
What people buy are solutions. We buy a car so we can go places, clothes to make us look good, gadgets to play with, books to learn from, etc. What we buy is a 'solution' to a need, desire or problem. Keep this in mind when you make a sales call to sell your product or service. Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Sell 'solutions' - not 'things'.
The understanding of thinking and learning styles is also a very useful sales skill in its own right. In learning about your own style, you will appreciate that other people each have their own preferred styles for communicating and receiving information. This relates strongly to the style in which people prefer to receive sales information from a sales person. By learning about this, you have already begun to increase your selling capability - because you are increasing your appreciation of how and why people prefer to make decisions and to buy.
Sales Tips
Focus on the customer - One of the most common mistakes that salespeople make is focusing on their product exclusively and neglecting to talk about the customer. It's a common mistake, from both the greenest rookie to the most experienced professional. While the product is important, focusing on the customer is even more important.
Be on time - When you tell someone you'll meet them at a specific time, they are counting on you to be there. They take you at your word. They give you theirs. They may go to extraordinary lengths to be there and if YOU aren't there on time, it shows lack of consideration for their time and you have not kept your word. People will remember this!
Asking questions is one of the most effective sales techniques you can use. By asking questions you begin to uncover the PB's pains, wants and desires.
Listen! - Too often, people think that to be a super sales person, one must like to talk. Unfortunately, this misconception causes more lost sales than anything else. If you are truly a sales professional, you will learn to LISTEN more than you talk. That's why we have one mouth and 2 ears!
Understanding your customer is so important that large corporations spend hundreds of millions annually on market research.
People buy for their own reasons, not for yours. Until you know your customer's reasons for wanting, or not wanting, to buy your product or service...you're in the dark! It doesn't matter how many reasons you give for believing your product or service is a great buy, they will mean nothing unless your customer has solid reasons of his own for wanting to do business with you.
Customers face new problems every day that can radically alter their needs for your products/services. The key is to stay in contact with your PB’s (Probable Buyers)...and ALWAYS ask questions to learn where they are in terms of needing your product/service.
You need to be able to use questions to stir up buying emotions. Improving your questioning techniques will help you to more easily find out what it is your PB wants, why they want it and what they intend to do with it. Master this important selling technique and closing will be so easy, it’s almost a non-event!
What people buy are solutions. We buy a car so we can go places, clothes to make us look good, gadgets to play with, books to learn from, etc. What we buy is a 'solution' to a need, desire or problem. Keep this in mind when you make a sales call to sell your product or service. Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Sell 'solutions' - not 'things'.
The understanding of thinking and learning styles is also a very useful sales skill in its own right. In learning about your own style, you will appreciate that other people each have their own preferred styles for communicating and receiving information. This relates strongly to the style in which people prefer to receive sales information from a sales person. By learning about this, you have already begun to increase your selling capability - because you are increasing your appreciation of how and why people prefer to make decisions and to buy.
Sales Tips
Focus on the customer - One of the most common mistakes that salespeople make is focusing on their product exclusively and neglecting to talk about the customer. It's a common mistake, from both the greenest rookie to the most experienced professional. While the product is important, focusing on the customer is even more important.
Be on time - When you tell someone you'll meet them at a specific time, they are counting on you to be there. They take you at your word. They give you theirs. They may go to extraordinary lengths to be there and if YOU aren't there on time, it shows lack of consideration for their time and you have not kept your word. People will remember this!
Asking questions is one of the most effective sales techniques you can use. By asking questions you begin to uncover the PB's pains, wants and desires.
Listen! - Too often, people think that to be a super sales person, one must like to talk. Unfortunately, this misconception causes more lost sales than anything else. If you are truly a sales professional, you will learn to LISTEN more than you talk. That's why we have one mouth and 2 ears!
Return on Investment - Most businesses are only interested in saving money or increasing profits. Keep ROI in mind when you're making a proposal or recommendation to a potential customer. Understanding the ROI helps a PB to justify the expenditure for buying your product or service in most cases.
Develop URGENCY to buy - When a PB avoids making the decision to buy from you, it's typically because they have no sense of urgency to buy. Your challenge is to prove to the PB that buying now is best for them and you must be able to offer solid reasons why. What will they miss if they wait even one more day? What are the benefits if they go ahead now? In other words, what's in it for them? Remember...the reason a customer buys your product or service is because of what it can do for them. Tell them!
If the product you're selling is something your PB can hold in his hands, get it into his hands as quickly as possible. In other words, get the PB 'into the act'. Let him feel it, weigh it, admire it.
Don't stand or sit alongside your PB. Instead, face him while you're pointing out the important advantages of your product. This will enable you to watch his facial expressions and determine whether and when you should go for the close. In handling sales literature, hold it by the top of the page, at the proper angle, so that your PB can read it as you're highlighting the important points. Regarding your sales literature, don't release your hold on it, because you want to control the specific parts you want the PB to read. In other words, you want the PB to read or see only the parts of the sales material you're telling him about at a given time.
When you get no feedback from your PB, you must involve him in your presentation. Stop and ask questions such as, "Now, don't you agree that this product can help you or would be of benefit to you?" After you've asked a question such as this, stop talking and wait for the PB to answer. It's a proven fact that following such a question, the one who talks first will lose, so don't say anything until after the PB has given you some kind of answer. Wait him out!
Remember that in selling, time is money! Therefore, you must allocate only so much time to each PB. The PB who asks you to call back next week, or wants to ramble on about similar products, prices or previous experiences, is costing you money.
After the introductory call on your PB, you should be selling products and collecting money. Any call backs should be only for reorders, or to sell him related products from your line. In other words, you can waste an introductory call on a PB to qualify him, but you're going to be wasting money if you continue calling on him to sell him the first unit of your product.
When faced with a reply such as, "Your product looks pretty good, but I'll have to give it some thought," you should quickly jump in and ask him what it is that he doesn't understand, or what specifically about your product does he feel he needs to give more thought. Let him explain, and that's when you go back into your sales presentation and make everything crystal clear for him to enable him to buy.
You must spend as much time as possible calling on new PB’s. Therefore, your first call should be a selling call with follow-up calls by mail or telephone (once every month or so in person) to sign him for reorders and other items from your product line.
Gather new ideas - Read, read, read. You will seldom read a selling book or article that does not inspire a new idea. Many sales books will cover some of the same ground; however, within each author’s mind lies a wealth of information and knowledge that, when shared, will help you to grow and succeed.
Update your skills - Do sales professionals today use the same sales techniques as they did a decade ago? If they are, they shouldn't be! Just as hairstyles, music, automobiles, clothing, and other things change, so does business and the skills needed to be successful. To be effective in selling today, you must move forward! Update your skills, your techniques, your tools, and your mind!
Listen and learn, especially while driving. Use this 'dead' time to listen to sales training and communications audio-tapes and CDs. Listen to anything about communications and behaviour, personal development and confidence, goals and aims, relationships and psychology, ethics and philosophy, marketing and business. All these areas directly relate to and give depth to your sales and selling capabilities.
Read all you can about behaviour and communications. Subscribe to sales and selling newsletters, especially to the many good free newsletters available from sales and selling websites, and other websites relating to behaviour, business, marketing and communications.
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